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The Christian State 



The 
Christian State 



The state. Democracy 
AND Christianity 



Si/ 
Samuel Zane Batten 




The Griffith & Rowland Press 

PHILADELPHIA 

BOSTON CHICAGO ST. LOUI3 

ATLANTA DAL'.J»iS 







Copyright 1909 by 
A. J. ROWLAND, Secretary 



Published May, 1909 



Two Copies Received 

WAY 27^9^9 



Atv.. M>- 




TO 

THE MEMORY OF MY 

fatber an& miotber 

FOR THEIR DEVOTION IN CHRISTIAN 

LIVING AND THEIR EXEMPLIFICATION 

OF CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP 

THIS BOOK 

IS 

GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 



3£ 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Introduction ^ 

CK.PT.P. BOOK I. THE STATE 

I. The Nature of the State ^7 

11. The Origin of the State 35 

III. The Functions of the State 54 

IV. The Ideal of the State 79 

V. The Forms of the State loo 

BOOK II. DEMOCRACY 

VI. The Beginnings of Democracy ii5 

VII. The Drift Toward Democracy 142 

VIII. The Advantages of Democracy 166 

IX. The Perils of Democracy 185 

X. The Unfinished Tasks of Democracy 216 

BOOK III. CHRISTIANITY 

XL The Relation of Church and State 257 

XII. The State and Its Religion 294 

XIII. The Problems of the Modern State Z'^l 

XIV. The Programme of a Christian Society 360 

XV. The Realization of the Christian State 402 



INTRODUCTION 

, The supreme interest of mankind is the progress and 
perfection of the human race. In this higher interest all 
lower interests are involved, and toward this great end 
all lesser ends must contribute. In this all-inclusive 
process all other processes appear as incidents and means, 
and by this final result all systems and sciences must be 
valued. It follows that whatever factor in life concerns 
man's welfare and has relation to his progress is a proper 
subject of human inquiry. This is all the justification 
that is needed for the study before us. 

There are three great outstanding facts and phenom- 
ena of our modern world which overtop all others, 
and are most potent in life. The first great fact is the 
State, that familiar, dominant, all-inclusive institution 
of man's social life. The State in some form is a uni- 
versal phenomenon, and its influence is as masterful as 
fate. It has always held a large place in the life of man, 
but in these modern times it claims the whole foreground 
of his interest. It has everywhere played a leading role 
in the drama of human progress, and signs multiply that 
its power is destined to wax rather than to wane. 

The second great fact is Democracy, the steady, irre- 
sistible, world-wide coming up of the people out of ob- 
scurity into authority. Democracy as a name is old indeed, 
but democracy as a fact is a modern phenomenon. But 
be it modern or not it is one of the most significant and 
certain tendencies of our time. In some lands it is only 
a suggestion ; in others it is at best an approximation ; but 
in all its complete realization it is only a question of time 

9 



10 INTRODUCTION 

and application. The democratic drift is a world gravita- 
tion, and one of the potent movements of the age. 

The third great fact is Christianity, the system of life 
and truth and motive of Jesus of Nazareth. Men's con- 
ceptions of Christianity differ widely and their interpre- 
tations run the whole gamut of possible variety. But 
Christianity itself is one thing, and men's definitions of it 
are quite another. Christianity is the most potent force 
in our modern civilization. The world dates its chro- 
nology from the birth of its Founder; its terms have 
become a part of our common speech, and it is not with- 
out meaning in world history. The State is a universal 
phenomenon, democracy is a universal drift, and Chris- 
tianity, its followers believe, is the universal religion. 

This suggests a natural and important question : " Is 
there any vital and necessary relation between these three 
great phenomena ? " Philosophy, we are told, is the art 
of thinking things together. Is it possible for one to 
think together these three great facts, the State, de- 
mocracy, and Christianity? These questions are among 
the most fateful questions of the time, and upon their 
right solution depend a hundred issues in man's life and 
progress. Through their neglect great loss has already 
come, and through their wrong solution great calamity 
may result. But these questions have hardly come, as yet, 
into the foreground of human inquiry. Aspects of these 
phenomena have been considered, and each of these great 
facts has been studied ; but so far as I am aware no one 
has considered each fact in its relation to the others. The 
inquiry before us, it is believed, has a timeliness and a 
value for reasons which may be briefly stated. 

The signs of the times indicate that the great strug- 
gles of the future are to be fought within the boundaries 
of the State. Current movements in human society show 
impending changes in our social and political institutions. 



INTRODUCTION II 

The foundations of all human institutions are being ex- 
amined with pick and shovel, and everything is challenged 
to show its warrant for continuance. Human society has 
begun to investigate itself, with the result that a chain of 
problems constitutes man's horizon. The interrogation 
mark is the sign manual of the age. The word, problem, 
is the most recurrent word in every language to-day. 

As might be expected, men are taking different atti-^ 
tudes toward the problems presented, and this greatly 
complicates the issue. Some are trying to hush men's 
fears by declaring that the evils of society are greatly 
exaggerated; and they close their homily by saying that 
all things will come right in time. At any rate, some of 
these things are inevitable — and perhaps necessary — in 
an imperfect society. And, anyway, they say, nature's 
processes cannot be hurried. Others, going to the op- 
posite extreme, are demanding the overthrow of all exist- 
ing institutions and the creation of a new social order. 
The old must go before the new can appear. Still others, 
and probably the largest class, stand confused, realizing 
that something is wrong, and that something must be 
done, and yet without any sense of direction or pro- 
gramme of action. With all these, of whatever class or 
party, there is the foreboding that vast changes are im- 
pending in our Western civilization of which no one is 
clairvoyant enough to see the end. And beyond all these 
differences, there is the conviction that a part of this 
something to be done must be done in and through the 
State, and that it is to the State that we must look for 
help. In a word, there is the conviction that there must 
be a wide extension of State activity into man's social 
and industrial life. And this means that the State is 
becoming one of the media of the new social conscious- 
ness that is growing, and that it must assume many new 
functions and exercise many new powers. 



12 INTRODUCTION 

But while these demands are being made upon the 
State some embarrassing questions are being asked con- 
cerning the State itself. What is its place in the economy 
of life ? What is its mission and what are its functions ? 
But even more disturbing questions are asked : By what 
right does the State exist at all and make its demands? 
Has not the time come to abolish all present political in- 
stitutions and make a new beginning in human progress ? 
Of one thing I am persuaded — and this persuasion is 
based upon years of earnest thought upon the questions 
of citizenship and of practical effort in behalf of reform — 
that one of the great needs of this present time is some 
large conception of the State, its meaning, its functions, 
its relation to man's progress, and its place in the purpose 
of God. However it may have been, and however it may 
be, now when men are coming to social self-consciousness 
and are asking why the State is here, and what is its 
destiny, the great need is some sense of direction in 
social action and a clear vision of the goal. 

" Where there is no vision the people perish." In these 
days the number of brave and thoughtful men is rapidly 
growing. In every community, large or small, there are 
groups and associations of reformers studying the ques- 
tions of the day and bent on change. In many cities there 
is a growing demand for better government and more 
worthy conditions. But the one who will take the pains 
to investigate will find, alas, that too often these men are 
considering some little task with small conception of 
the total task which confronts society. They are working 
for a better city, and yet few have vision of what a city 
should be. They want better government and worthier 
conditions without always knowing when government is 
good and what conditions should exist. In short, they 
want a better world, but they do not know where to begin 
nor how to proceed. Under these circumstances the great 



INTRODUCTION 13 

need is some human synthesis, some social ideal, which 
shall both show men the direction of progress and shall 
marshal them as one host to build the City of God. To 
understand the special task of one man we must know its 
relation to the total task of mankind. To know how to 
use that mighty agency of human progress, the State, we 
must know something of the meaning and mission of the 
State. In fine, the great need of to-day is some adequate, 
conception of the State, its nature and functions, some 
definite sense of the direction of human progress, and 
some clear understanding of the relation of Christianity 
to the whole life of man. 

And this suggests the thesis with which we are con- 
cerned in this study. It is easy for one who is interested 
in some special line to suppose that his interest should be 
the concern of all. Be this as it may, it is impossible to 
overestimate the importance of this subject or exaggerate 
its relation to man's social progress. In his day John 
Bunyan rendered the individual an incalculable service 
in that he interpreted the soul to itself and made it know 
its calling, its duties, its dangers, and its destiny. But 
the interpretation of the " Pilgrim's Progress," clear and 
scriptural as it is in its personal aspects, does not satisfy 
either the mind or the heart of the modern man. In the 
providences of God and the processes of history the age 
of the social man is dawning, and the social problem is 
becoming urgent. The man who can now interpret the 
State to itself, who can make society know its mean- 
ing, its functions, its tasks, and its goal, who can interpret 
this modern phenomenon known as democracy and can 
show its relation to human progress, who can show the 
real relation of the State to the kingdom of God and can 
indicate the lines of effort for the divine potencies of the 
gospel, will render mankind an even greater service. 
Tho<- fhf^ writer has fulfilled more than a fraction of this 



14 INTRODUCTION 

great task he is not vain enough to suppose. But that he 
has indicated some of the factors entering into the prob- 
lem he may confidently beHeve. The fact is, this is a 
task that will require the combined efforts of generations 
of men fully to approximate. That the author has tried 
to see things clearly and has blinked no difficulty he may 
modestly claim. This is probably all that may be expected 
of any man in any one generation. 

That great changes are imminent in our modern world, 
that a new age is struggling to the birth, that a new order 
of society is impending, that political institutions are still 
evolving, and that the State must assume some new func- 
tions, the signs of the times indicate and the most dis- 
cerning men believe. What will be the attitude of Chris- 
tian men in this time of crisis? Will they misread the 
signs and take an attitude of opposition and suspicion? 
What will be the relation between the democratic move- 
ment and the Christian spirit? What will be the out- 
come of the formative forces that are now at work in 
society? These are some of the fateful sphinx questions 
of to-morrow, and upon their right solution depend a 
hundred issues. Will Christian men see to it that the age 
is Christian in spirit and method? Will the citizens of 
the democratic State see to it that the social and political 
institutions of the future are motived by the mind of 
Christ? Will the Church and the State work with each 
supplementing the other, or at cross purposes? Finally, 
will the State become the medium through which the 
people shall co-operate in their search after the kingdom of 
God and its righteousness? The answer to these questions 
lies still in the future ; and though we may not forecast the 
result, we may yet hope for the best. This is certain, that 
if Christianity fails here it will spell a most tragic failure. 
If Christianity succeeds here, it will win a most momen- 
tous victory and will gain the allegiance of mankind. 



Book I. The State 



A State contains in itself, if I may so speak, the perfection of 
independence; and it is first founded that men may live, but 
continued that they may live happily. 

—Aristotle, Politics, Bk. I, Chap. 2. 

The State — the greatest institution on earth — elevates every- 
thing that appertains to it, every duty, interest or measure, into 
great importance, for the simple reason that it affects all, and, 
what with its direct and indirect operation, it very materially 
influences the moral well-being of every individual. . . The State 
with its laws and government affects materially the manhood of 
all living in it. Good laws elevate men ; bad laws, if persisted in 
for a series of years, will degrade any society. 

—Francis Lieher, Political Ethics, Vol. I, Sec. XXXVIII. 

Honesty, morality, religion, and education are the main pillars 
of the State, for the protection and promotion of which govern- 
ment was instituted among men. 

— Commonwealth vs. Douglas, 100, Ky., 116. Affirmed by 168 
U. S. Rep., 488. 

The social order, the national sentiments, the governmental 
regulations influence immeasurably every soul that comes within 
their reach. More and more men are coming to see that the 
State has a moral end, and that the real work of citizens con- 
sists in so shaping institutions and framing legislation that con- 
ditions may be secured favorable for the development of noble 
characters. . . Politics is the science of social welfare, and has 
at heart the achievement of a social order in which the ideals of 
humanity shall be realized. 

— Batten, The New Citizenship, pp. 245, 246. 

The State is, in one view, a piece of machinery produced by 
the social process, but the justification for its existence is its 
continued furtherance of the process. . . The State never is, hut is 
always becoming. This is true because the persons composing 
the State never are, but are always -becoming. A process is 
gomg on, is our most general way of telling the essential truth 
about a person or a society. 

— Small,. _ General Sociology, p. 240. 



THE NATURE OF THE STATE 



WHAT we call the State is a recognized force 
and factor in the life of all peoples. In the study 
of history we find men at all stages of mental and social 
development, but we never find them without polit- 
ical institutions. If savage means a people without a 
settled form of government, without laws, and without a 
religion, says Max Miiller, then, go where you like, you 
will not find such a race (" Nineteenth Cen.," Jan., 1885). 
In the study of sociology also we find peoples at all levels 
of progress, but if there has ever been a people without 
some form of social and political life, we have no record 
of its existence. Everywhere we find men associated 
in some way, submitting to some public authority, and 
exercising certain powers through an agency termed 
government. The forms of their social life may vary, 
the scope of authority may differ among different peoples, 
and the functions of these governments may run the 
gamut of variety, but beneath all appearances and differ- 
ences there are constant elements and essential resem- 
blance. The State is a universal phenomenon. 

The State makes many demands upon its citizens and 
exercises wide control. In its worst forms, the State may 
override the individual and may become an intolerable 
tyranny ; it may treat men as means to its own ends ; it 
may compel them to hold their lives, their fortunes, and 
their happiness at the will of another; in fine, it may 
affirm that men have no rights as against the State. In 
its best forms the State asks the service of all in its behalf; 

B ly 



l8 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

in the form of taxes it requires a portion of every man's 
income ; by the right of eminent domain, which it asserts 
is older and deeper than any individual right, it may 
claim a part of his estate ; and in times of danger and need 
it may ask him to lay his all upon its altar. In the 
Grecian States, in their palmiest days, the State v^as every- 
thing, and the person counted for little (De Coulanges, 
"The Ancient City," pp. 297, 298). In the most demo- 
cratic States, in these modern times, the State is the unit 
and the final v^orth of man is his value to society. In view 
of all this, as rational beings we should consider the right 
of the State to be, and should be able to conceive clearly 
its nature. What then is this institution, so universally 
known as the State? What is its essential nature, and 
what are its constant characteristics? And by what 
right does it exist and assert its authority? 

The moment we ask these questions our perplexity be- 
gins. For " The conception which prevails generally 
among the men of our time of the State, its nature, and 
the part it has to play, is singularly confusing and con- 
fused. . . When it approaches this theme, which has so 
weighty a bearing on human destinies, their thought loses 
itself in mist and fog" (Beaulieu, "The Modern State," 
p. i). In this chapter we are concerned with the 
nature of the State; in other chapters we shall con- 
sider its functions and its goal. Clear thought here will 
help us all the way, while confusion here means increas- 
ing confusion at the end. It is evident that any concep- 
tion of the State, to be adequate, must be one that will 
disclose its nature and characteristics ; it must be one too, 
that will contain justification of the right of the State to 
be and exercise authority; and it must contain a satisfac- 
tory statement of the attributes with which a State is en- 
dowed and by which it is distinguished from other corpo- 
rations (Willoughby, "The Nature of the State," p. 6). 



THE NATURE OF THE STATE I9 

Such an inquiry has its difficulties, for the reason that the 
forms and functions of the State have varied so greatly. 
But with it all we shall find certain constant and irre- 
ducible elements, and these are worthy of careful con- 
sideration. We are not concerned primarily with the 
exterior features of the State; our chief concern is with 
its ultimate nature and essential quality. These former 
characteristics are interesting, and Bluntschli has analyzed 
them with great discrimination. Thus we are told that 
in every State we find a number of men combined, hold- 
ing a permanent relation to the soil, and bound together in 
a more or less firm cohesion; in all States we find a dis- 
tinction between the governors and the governed; and in 
every State we find the people associated in some organic 
whole (BluntschH, "The Theory of the State, Bk. I, 
chap. i). These last characteristics are vital, and these we 
must consider in detail. 

I. The State is the Political Organization of the People. 
There are three great institutions which in some form 
are universal — the Family, the Church, and the State. 
These three institutions cover the entire range of human 
life, and their perfection implies its perfection. Each has 
its functions, though they all occupy much the same 
sphere. Each has its distinctive mission in the economy 
of life, yet they all work toward the one common end. 
In any complete and synthetic view of man and society, 
these institutions must be considered, and their relation to 
one another determined. It is not necessary to our pur- 
pose, however, that we enter upon a discussion of the 
family and the church, for that would carry us too far 
afield. And yet, to form an adequate conception of the 
State, we must note some of the distinctions that exist in 
the fundamental life and organization of these institu- 
tions. By marking the contrasts each may be more clearly 
defined. 



20 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Thus the family, the Institute of the Affections, is the 
medium through which the person begins to be. It is the 
channel through which the stream of human life flows 
on. The church, the Household of Faith, is the agency 
through which divine and quickening influences are 
brought to bear upon the unfolding Ufe. Through it man 
is brought to God, and the human spirit is lifted up mto 
fellowship with the divine Spirit. The church is con- 
cerned primarily with the work of informmg the mmd, 
training the conscience, stirring the affections, and direct- 
ing the will. The State, the Institute of Right Relations, 
is the means through which the environment of life is de- 
termined. It is the chief function of the State to provide 
and conserve the conditions of human existence, and 
thus make it possible for each life to attain its fullest 

development. 

These three institutions, though essential to man and 
representing vital factors of his being, yet have a differ- 
ent basis of organization and assume a different form. 
The family is in a real sense necessary to man, for it is m 
the family that he begins and completes his life. He who 
made them in the beginning made them male and female, 
and ordained that a man shall leave his father and his 
mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they twain become 
one flesh (Matt. 19 : 4). But implied in this very 
distinction and involved in the very relation of husband 
and wife is one element all important, and that is love 
In the most real sense, it is love that draws the man and 
the woman together; it is love that creates the family; 
it is in love that the family has its potency and its life^ In 
the most real sense, therefore, the family may be called the 
commonwealth of the affections ; in the poetic and sig- 
nificant words of Mazzini it may be called the heart s 

fatherland. 

The church no less than the family is necessary to man, 



THE NATURE OF THE STATE 21 

and grows out of his great needs. It is true that what we 
call the church is more or less limited to Christian peoples ; 
but the church, which represents the religious life of man, 
is found in some form in every land. For wherever we 
find man we find him observing certain religious forms 
and creating definite religious institutions, and these in 
a general way represent what we may call the church. 
We are here concerned with the developed and differ- 
entiated idea as it exists in Christian lands in the Chris- 
tian church. This church, we find as we consider it, is a 
voluntary organization. It is true that among the earlier 
peoples of the world the institutions of religion were re- 
garded as fixed, not to be created by man nor to be 
changed by him. It is true also that in many divisions 
of Christendom the church is regarded as a necessary in- 
stitution, in that membership in it is determined for man, 
and not by him. Thus in some communions the child is 
baptized in infancy into the church, and without any 
choice of his own is " made a member of Christ, a child of 
God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." But 
it must be observed that in all of these churches some- 
thing depends upon the will of the person himself; for 
as he comes to maturity he is expected to ratify this attion 
of his sponsors, and thus his church life is the expression 
of his own personal choice. In many divisions of Chris- 
tendom special emphasis is laid upon this element of 
personal choice, and membership in the church is wholly 
a voluntary matter. A man is not born into the church 
as he is born into the family or the State, but he is re- 
born into it through his own personal faith. But — and 
this is the one thing that concerns us here — the church 
in its life and organization depends wholly upon its appeal 
to man's reason and its harmony with his will ; or, it 
may be said that the church is the visible form of man's 
faith in Christ and the organized expression of the divine 



22 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

life. The church has not always been true to its essential 
idea, and has sometimes approximated the State in its 
methods ; it has more than once employed other agencies 
than the persuasives of the gospel, and has sought the 
arm of the State in making its wishes effective. But more 
and more the best men in all communions are coming 
to see that this is contrary to the mind of Christ and is in 
contravention of the very idea of the church. The church 
is a voluntary organization ; it has its foundations in the 
faith of men, and it may be called the household of faith 
and the building of the Spirit. 

The State, while quite as necessary to man as either 
of these institutions, has yet a different basis, and depends 
upon other factors. Wherever we go we find the State 
in some form, and the man who does not wish to be a 
citizen must consort with savages or leave the world. He 
is born into the State, and he must accept its political 
institutions. He may not find himself in harmony with 
the institutions and policies of the State, and may 
refuse to vote or accept office, but none the less he is 
subject to its authority, must pay his quota of taxes, and 
must conduct himself in an orderly manner. 

This means that the State represents other factors than 
those of affection and faith. It may be said that the 
State will flourish best where it has both the aifection and 
confidence of all its citizens ; but the State is concerned 
with other interests than the family and the church, and 
may employ very different machinery. The State has to 
do with rights, and in a way depends upon these. But 
rights imply duties; a duty Is always the obverse of a 
right. The State that would maintain rights must 
also enforce duties; and this means a government that 
can make its decrees effective. To secure these human 
rights and to enforce these corollary duties governments 
are instituted, and are just in so far as they hold the 



THE NATURE OF THE STATE 23 

balance even. This does not tell the whole story, and is 
not a full definition, but it is true so far as it goes. This 
means that the State is concerned with what may be 
called the civic and political interests of man; that it exists 
to secure for men their rights, and that its authority must 
be employed in defending those rights; it means, in a 
word, that the State is the political organization of the 
people, with powers sufficient for its task. The State may 
be considered as society in its corporate capacity and as 
exercising a definite control over the lives of its mem- 
bers; that is, "The State is the politically organized 
national person of a definite country " (Bluntschli, " The 
Theory of the State," Bk. I, chap. i). 

11. The State is the Organ of the Political Conscious- 
ness. In his great treatise on poHtics, Aristotle, "The 
father of them who know," lays down the dictum that 
man is by nature a political being; and the man who is 
naturally and not accidentally unfit for human society is 
either below or above the human stage (" Politics," Bk. 
I, chap. ii). Thus the Cyclops reviled by Homer are 
proved to be less than human in that they have neither 
courts nor markets, and live as solitary as a bird of prey : 

No laws have they ; they hold 
No councils. On the mountain heights they dwell 
In vaulted caves, where each man rules his wives 
And children as he pleases; none give heed 
To what the others do. 

—Odyssey, TX : 136-140 

With keen analysis Aristotle shows that there is in all 
normal persons an instinct which impels them to some 
form of political organization; and he who first estab- 
lished civil society was the cause of the greatest benefit 
to mankind. This primary affirmation of the Stagirite 
subsequent thinking has not invalidated, but rather con- 



24 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

firmed. For which reason every State is a work of 
nature. The fact is, some form of human society is to 
be found among every people that is truly human, and 
in a large way it may be said that a people is to be 
ranked as high or low in the scale of life according to 
the degree in which the art of living together has been 
learned and political institutions have been developed. 
Men, as we know them, are made for fellowship, and they 
can attain perfection of being only through association 
with their kind. One man, says the German proverb, is 
no man. Could a man grow up with lifeless nature, with- 
out human association of any kind, says a modern psy- 
chologist, '' there is nothing to indicate that he would 
become as self-conscious as is now a fairly educated cat " 
(Royce, "Studies of Good and Evil," p. 208). It is 
easier for the rose to grow without soil and to bloom 
without sunshine than for man to unfold his possibilities 
and to become man without human fellowship. 

In the development of political thought, various views 
have been advanced to account for the State, and to define 
its essential nature. Some of these views, with reference 
to the origin of the State, we shall notice in the next 
chapter. Not one of these views, as we shall see, is satis- 
factory; the only views which are at all adequate are 
those which assume that man is a social and political 
being, possessing a consciousness and instinct which seek 
and find expression in association and institutions of 
political life. 

An illustration of the growth of the State may be found 
in the history of many of the American commonwealths. 
A number of immigrants from different lands move into 
a new territory and settle there. At first the families are 
few and scattered, and do what seems right in their own 
eyes. But the day comes when these isolated settlers 
become established and begin to find one another out. 



THE NATURE OF THE STATE 2^ 

Now men begin to feel the need of some formal organ- 
ization which shall represent the common life and con- 
serve the common good. Each man has an impulse toward 
association. Each man in his place looks up and sees 
another. In some way they will seek to express their 
mutual life and become united in poHtical relations. This 
instinct for fellowship, this consciousness of kind, at once 
finds expression and realization in certain associations 
and institutions. Men have an instinct which impels them 
to seek association; they are conscious of mutual rights 
and duties ; in this instinct and consciousness we find the 
forces that draw men together and create the State. 
Thus when these persons come together to form some 
association and to create some government they do not 
have to begin at the beginning. In the persons that com- 
pose the State consciousness of their oneness exists, and 
this becomes explicit and objective in the political organ- 
ism. Call it what we will — the sense of kinship, the 
consciousness of kind, the instinct of fellowship — the fact 
is, there is that which leads man to seek out his fellows and 
to associate with them. The State is the expression of this 
human fellowship, and becomes the organ of the political 
consciousness. 

III. The State is the Institute of Right Relations. " A 
State," so Plato reports Socrates, " arises, as I conceive, 
out of the needs of mankind ; no one is self-sufficing, but 
all have many wants. Can any other origin of a State be 
imagined ? 

" ' None,' replied Adeimantus. 

" ' Then, as we have many wants, and many persons are 
needed to supply them, one takes a helper for one purpose, 
and another for another ; and when these helpers and 
partners are gathered together in one habitation, the body 
of inhabitants is termed a State? 

True,' he said " (" The Republic," Bk. II). 



(< ( 



26 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

A simple and primitive condition of life may not 
need much in the way of a political organization. The 
early settlers in some of the American States, it is said, 
cared little for the protection of government, and felt well 
able to get along without it. Each man depended upon 
himself and his trusty rifle. At best, such a Stateless con- 
dition is possible only so long as families are widely scat- 
tered. As soon as men come into closer relations and 
society becomes more complex, some organization or in- 
stitute of right relations becomes necessary. Robinson 
Crusoe and his man Friday can get along very well on 
their solitary island without a government, so long as 
Crusoe is master and Friday is servant, and there is no 
one else to encroach or interfere. But the moment Crusoe 
returns to civilized life, that moment his relations are 
multiplied and the State becomes necessary. 

Life, according to the best definition, is a matter of 
relationships. The higher the life the larger the number 
of these and the more complex they become. Modern 
society, as we know it, is complex and intricate, and the 
dependences of man upon man are manifold. It must be 
evident that these relations cannot be left to individual 
caprice. The relations of man with man must be just 
and right, or they become intolerable. In a modern city 
where life touches life at a thousand points, and where 
each man is dependent upon his fellows, it is necessary 
that there be some power or authority over and above the 
individuals which shall define and adjust the relations 
existing among them. The strong must not be allowed 
to tyrannize over the weak. It is clear that men must 
not be left to shift for themselves, with each taking all 
he can get and keeping all he has secured. There are a 
thousand and one questions concerning the things that 
are more or less in common, such as streets and pavmg, 
fire and police protection, transportation and communica- 



THE NATURE OF THE STATE 27 

tion, that must be defined in charters and ordinances. 
In brief, there are certain rights which each person 
may claim as a member of society, and these rights may 
be defined as " the organic whole of the outward condi- 
tions of a life according to reason." 

In the history of political progress much has been said 
about the rights of man, and great revolutions have been 
fought to obtain these rights. In any complete account of 
the State, it is necessary that these rights be considered 
and their nature determined. It would be necessary also 
to show that these rights are social things, and that their 
very conception by man implies an order of social rela- 
tions. This work has been done most thoroughly by 
Thomas Hill Green, in his " Principles of Political Obliga- 
tion," and by Professor Ritchie, in ^' Natural Rights." 
This inquiry reveals the fact that every right implies a 
duty. To assert that one is a person with rights society 
is bound to respect, is to assert that he is a person with 
duties society may require. Thus we are led inevitably 
to the conception of man, with mutual rights and duties ; 
and also to the conception of the State as the organ 
through which these rights and duties are defined and 
enforced. It is possible for one to deal with these rights 
and duties, but it seems better to deal directly with human 
relations as more vital and personal. And inasmuch as 
rights and duties rest upon human relations, it is better 
to deal directly with the relations themselves. 

These human relations are woven into the very warp 
and woof of man's life. The State finds that there are 
certain relations which men sustain to one another in 
society, and then it attempts to define and safeguard these 
relations. It does not create these relations, it does 
not even create the consciousness of them. There is a 
sense in which we may define a civil law as the legal for- 
mulation of a social custom. The law implies a custom 



28 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

and a consciousness ; it defines what is found in this cus- 
tom and consciousness; it delimits and sanctions these; 
it defines what each person owes the other; it pledges 
itself to safeguard these relations of men so far as they 
are in justice and truth; it puts the stamp of its authority 
upon them and makes them obligatory; and it punishes 
the person who violates and dishonors them. The law of 
the State is thus the pledge of security and fair dealing; 
it defines the rules of social conduct which each member 
of society shall observe in his dealings with others; it 
throws over these relations the mantle of its protection 
and sets upon them the stamp of its approval. 

There are certain relations in which men stand to one 
another, as husbands and wives, fathers and children, 
friends and neighbors, masters and employees, taxpayers 
and officials, which are before and above all governments. 
These relations of man with man, however, must be 
correlated and adjusted or they become intolerable. The 
rights with which man is endowed and the duties which 
he must fulfil must be defined and safeguarded, or they 
will be overrun and neglected. The purpose of the State, 
through its institutions and laws, is to interpret and define 
these relations, to throw over them the mantle of its pro- 
tection, and to hallow them with its authority. In what 
we call the State we have the substitution of a general, 
beneficent, definite, universal will for an uncertain, arbi- 
trary, personal, fractional will. As members of society 
each man consents to have his interests interpreted and 
measured by the common will and welfare, instead of his 
personal and special will and wish. In case of a conflict 
of wills and interests, each agrees to settle the questions 
at issue by an appeal to this common interest and verdict. 
The nature of the State in this part of our definition is 
now becoming clear. It is the Institute of Right Rela- 
tions ; and it becomes the guarantee to each man that his 



THE NATURE OF THE STATE 29 

rights shall be conserved, and his proper status in society 

maintained. 

IV. The State is the Partnership of Men in all Good. 
Very different conceptions of the nature of the State have 
been promulgated from time to time. These conceptions 
range from the very lowest minimum of State action to 
the highest point of social control. These conceptions 
may be briefly considered, as a kind of background against 
which we can see the whole picture. 

I. It has been maintained that the State is a jural so- 
ciety. In the early stages of their associated life men 
feel the need of some authority which shall protect their 
rights and shall maintain justice. And so it comes about 
that men create some forms of political control which 
shall maintain their private interests and maintain peace. 
The State, in this conception, is a great poUceman whose 
sole function it is to prevent disorder. The State is also 
a judicial authority whose business it is to adjust differ- 
ences. Beyond these functions the State can claim no 
authority. It is needless to multiply names, but some great 
reputations are associated with this conception. Thus, 
Herbert Spencer declares that the State is simply a com- 
mittee of management, and it has no intrinsic authority ; 
its authority is given by those appointing it; and it has 
just such bounds as they choose to impose ("The Man 
versus The State," p. 411). Macaulay, in his essay on 
Gladstone's " Church and State," maintains that the pri- 
mary end of government is the protection of persons and 
property ; he thinks " that government should be organ- 
ized solely with a view to this end." This conception, it 
may be said, is true so far as it goes, but it does not go far 
enough ; in fact, it ignores those very things which have 
been most conspicuous in the life of all great States. It 
thinks of the State as a vast machine driven by the forces 
of public and private interest— a sort of huge insurance 



30 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

society, the taxes being the premium (Lilly, " First 
Principles in Politics," p. 29). 

2. It is maintained that the State is an economic society. 
This view, it may be said, has had few exponents in the 
past, in theory at least, but it is finding many defenders 
to-day in practice. In this view the State is an organi- 
zation for the promotion of man's physical and commercial 
well-being, and when this is conserved the State has ful- 
filled its office. Man cannot live without property, and 
this property must be protected. Human well-being is 
promoted by trade, and trade must be extended. The 
State in this conception furnishes the conditions in which 
each man can best advance his material interests. It is 
evident that this is the conception of the State which holds 
the first place in the mind of the average statesman to- 
day. An examination of the measures that come before 
the modern Congress or Parliament or Reichstag, will 
reveal the fact that an increasing proportion of these 
measures are concerned with the economic interests of 
the people. There are many who insist that the State has 
little to do with other matters, such as education and 
morality; such things must be delegated to private indi- 
viduals and voluntary associations. 

3. Included in these conceptions, and yet rising far be- 
yond them, we find the conception of the State as a part- 
nership of men in all good. Aristotle, than whom no 
clearer political thinker ever lived, maintained that civil 
society was not founded for the sake of preserving and 
increasing property. " Nor was civil society founded 
merely in order that its members might live, but that they 
might live well. . . It is evident then that a State is not 
a mere community of place, nor established for the sake of 
mutual safety or traffic. A State is a society of people 
joining together with their families and their children to 
live well, for the sake of a perfect and independent 



THE NATURE OF THE STATE 3I 

life" ("Politics," Bk. Ill, chap. ix). The same 
thought runs through the masterly oration of Pericles, 
delivered over the Athenians who fell in the Pelo- 
ponnesian war. All through this oration, which may well 
be the model of its kind, there runs the conception of 
the State, not as a mere dwelling-place for men, nor 
as a provision for their material well-being alone, but as 
the sphere of highest activity. The great words of 
Burke emphasize the same truth, and are worthy of 
careful consideration. " The State ought not to be con- 
sidered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in 
a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some 
other such low concern, to be taken up for a httle tempo- 
rary interest and to be dissolved by the fancy of the 
parties. It is to be looked on with reverence ; because it is 
not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross 
animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. 
It is a partnership in all science ; a partnership in all 
art ; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection " 
("Reflections on the Revolution in France"). 

The State we find is the one organ great enough and 
varied enough to express and correlate the varied 
powers and talents of mankind, the one medium through 
which all men can co-operate in their search after social 
perfection. The State is the only organ through which 
the people can act as a unit in their pursuit of righteous- 
ness, and it is the only medium through which they can 
act together in the organization of their common life in 
truth. The Earl of Shaftesbury, like many another man, 
had found in himself the desire to help his fellows in their 
struggle after better things. How could he make his 
desire most effective and himself most helpful? By 
personal work with individuals he might have inspired 
and saved a soul here and there, but by working for the 
enactment of better laws regulating factories and mines, 



32 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

by bringing the power of Parliament to bear upon abuses 
and wrongs, and by enlisting the whole life of the nation 
on behalf of the downmost man, he made the goodness 
and wisdom, the power and love of the whole nation the 
means of uplifting and helping the weaker and more 
backward. There must be some medium through which 
men can work in giving themselves for society. The 
State is the only organ great enough to express the varied 
powers of man, the only medium through which men 
can co-operate in the attainment of the social perfection. 

V. The State is the Realization of Man's Rational Life. 
This end, the realization of man's rational life, is the 
one end in view. Man is a being of relationships, and he 
is what he is through fellowship. " Individuality does 
not come first and society next as a product. Society is 
fundamental, and is an essential condition for self- 
consciousness. However contradictory it may sound, it 
is nevertheless the fact, that there could be no self 
without many selves. Self-consciousness is a possible 
attainment only in a world where it already exists. Per- 
sonality at every stage involves interrelation " (Jones, 
" Social Law in the Spiritual World," p. 58). " To be a 
person one must be a conscious member in a social order. 
Man is what he is because he is a member of society. It 
is impossible to be a person without being in a broad 
sense a member of society, a citizen of a State, for it is 
through the organized life of the world that one comes 
to himself" (Jones, ibid., p. 74). 

The State, it is thus seen, has a most vital relation to the 
development of personality. The individual comes to 
self-consciousness in and through social fellowship. 
Freedom, morality, personality, and perfection, the things 
that give meaning and dignity to life, are all developed 
and realized in and through the social organism. Freedom 
can be realized not in individual caprice, but in social 



THE NATURE OF THE STATE 33 

control. IMorality can be realized not in individual iso- 
lation, but in social relationships. Personality can be 
realized not in individual independence and self-living, but 
in social dependence and social living. Perfection can be 
realized not in individual self-seeking, but in social self- 
sacrifice. In the State, there are secured and maintained 
for the person the sphere and conditions of his highest 
personal development in freedom and morality. The 
State brings the wisdom and the strength of all to bear 
upon the weakness and ignorance of each, that each may 
become wise with the wisdom and strong with the 
strength of all. Paradoxical as it may seem, the State, 
by its social control, secures to each member the largest 
measure of personal freedom, as the State, through its 
social organization, provides the field for the realization 
of the largest measure of morality. The individual comes 
to self-realization as he sacrifices himself for the common 
life. He that findeth his life for himself shall lose it; 
but he that loseth his life in the State, shall find it. 

There can be no conception of a right without a con- 
sciousness of common interests on the part of the members 
of a society. And there can be no realization of a right 
except in and through the social organism. The person 
and the State exist in organic and vital relations with one 
another, and in the fulfilment of these relations the normal 
development of each is secured. The State is not some- 
thing external and formal, something apart from the 
essential life of man, some arbitrary and conventional 
compact for securing the private rights of individuals; it 
is something organic and vital, the necessary medium 
and vital organism through which life itself is conserved 
and realized. In a word, man is here to fulfil the purpose 
of God and to realize his own rational life, and the 
State is one of the agencies through which this jjurpose is 
realized. 
c 



24 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

We are now in a position to gather up the threads and 
weave them into a full conception. There are certain 
necessary and vital conditions of man's life in society, 
and there must be some institution which shall concern 
itself primarily with these conditions. There is in all 
men a political and social consciousness which draws them 
together, and tends ever to express itself in social and 
political forms. There are certain necessary relations 
that subsist among men, and these must be interpreted 
and safeguarded. Men have certain interests, personal, 
jural, economic, and political, but over and above these 
there is what may be called the vital interest. There are 
among men various associations for various purposes, 
economic, educational, social, religious ; that life may be- 
come a unity and society may have peace, there must 
be some synthesis which shall include these partial inter- 
ests, and some association which shall correlate all lesser 
associations. And last of all, since the supreme interest 
of man is the promotion of human welfare, and since 
true progress is only possible through the co-operation of 
all for the sake of all, there must be some agency which 
shall represent the interests of all, and shall be a medium 
for their mutual sacrifices and services. This organization 
and association and agency and medium is what we may 
call the State. The State is thus " a microcosm of the 
whole human process. The State is the co-operation of 
all the citizens for the furtherance of all the interests 
of which they are conscious. . ." The State embraces all 
other associations of persons. "All lesser associations 
find their correlation within the State" (Small, " General 
Sociology," pp. 226, 227). 



II 

THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 

IN the study before us, we are concerned not alone with 
the outward and visible stages through which the 
State has passed in its progress from beginning to ma- 
turity; but we are concerned as well with its primary 
causes, and are interested in knowing the social forces that 
bring men together. These outward and visible stages 
can be traced with comparative ease in the history of any 
of the great States. But these inner and causative forces 
must be found rather in the nature of man and the mea©. 
ing of society. The fact is one thing, and the cause of 
the fact is quite another. It is through the knowledge of 
the fact, however, that we are led back to the knowledge 
of its causes. And it is through the knowledge of the fact 
and its causes that we are led on into a knowledge of its 
meaning and end. When this is attained, knowledge has 
fulfilled its task, and the way is prepared for action. 

The theories that have been advanced from time to 
time to explain the origin of the State are simply innu- 
merable and deal with all aspects of the question. But 
beneath all this diversity, it is found that these theories 
arrange themselves in certain more or less definite 
classes. These characteristic and outstanding views we 
may now briefly consider. 

I. The State as a Divine Creation. This is the earliest 
view, and it is the view that has had many advocates all 
through the centuries. According to this conception the 
State is the creation of God, either direct or indirect, 
and so it may be regarded as the human revelation of his 

35 



^6 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

divine government. Among the earliest peoples of whom 
we have clear knowledge, the Semites, we find this con- 
ception in full expression even in the most primitive times. 
In this conception every human being, simply by virtue 
of his birth, became a member of what we call natural 
society. " This circle into which he was born was not 
simply a group of kinsfolk and fellow-citizens, but em- 
braced also certain divine beings, the gods of the family 
and of the State, which to the ancient mind were as much 
a part of a particular community ... as the human mem- 
bers of the social circle " ( W. Robertson Smith, " The Re- 
ligion of the Semites," p. 29). If a god was spoken of as 
father and his worshipers as his offspring, the meaning 
was that the worshipers were literally of his stock. In all 
cases also where the god was addressed as king and the 
worshipers called themselves his servants, it was^ implied 
that the supreme guidance of the State was in his hands 
(W. Robertson Smith, ibid., p. 30). In all these concep- 
tions the social organization and the religious system 
rest upon the same common foundation, and no distinction 
is made between them. This means that the social order 
has a religious basis, and that the god of the people is 
the creator of their political relations. 

This conception lay at the basis of the Jewish State, 
and finds expression all through the nation's history. 
Lawgivers and prophets emphasize the thought that it 
was Jehovah who had made Israel to be a people ; it was 
Jehovah who had called Abram and had guided the 
fathers of the nation ; it was Jehovah who had led them 
out of Egypt and had given them a law for their national 
life ; it was Jehovah who was their sole and rightful kmg, 
and it was his law that they were to obey. Lawgiver 
and judges may be given from time to time, but these are 
the spokesmen and representatives of Jehovah ; the law- 
giver is to hear the word at Jehovah's mouth and speak 



THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 37 

it to the people ; and the judge is charged to judge right- 
eously, for the judgment is the Lord's. When the people at 
last demand a visible king who shall reign over them and 
lead their armies, Jehovah declares that they have not 
rejected merely his representative, but " they have re- 
jected me that I should not be king over them " ( i Sam. 
8:7). When at a later time the people, through their 
representatives, declared, We have no king but Caesar, 
Judaism, was guilty of a denial of God, of blasphemy, of 
apostasy. It committed suicide (Edersheim, " Life and 
Times of Jesus the Messiah," Vol. II, p. 581). 

It is not necessary to consider the various forms of this 
theory. With many modifications, it was the one adopted 
by the Romans to account for the origin of their State ; 
and it was the view of the Greeks and Egyptians, and in 
fact of practically all nations of the world. 

It may be said in criticism of this view that no State can ^ 
be found whose origin is clearly a divine creation. This 
view is formulated late in the life of a people to account 
for its existence and as a reason for fidelity to the gods. 
It has given occasion for all sorts of pretensions and usur- 
pations on the part of human rulers. On the one hand it 
has given rise to priest rule, which always and everywhere 
has produced evil results; and on the other hand it has 
given validity to the assumption of the divine right of 
kings and has been used to uphold the powers that be. 

II. The Patriarchal Theory. One of the most plausible 
and prominent theories of the State is that known as the 
patriarchal theory. In this view it is maintained that 
whatever social organization existed originated in kin- 
ship. " The Patriarchal theory of society is the theory 
of its origin in separate families, held together by the 
authority and protection of the eldest valid male descend- 
ant " (Maine, " Early Hist, of Inst.") . " The original bond 
of union and the original sanction of magisterial authority 



/ 



38 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

were one and the same, namely, real or feigned blood 
relationship. In other words, families were the original 
units of social organization" (Wilson, "The State," pp. 
2, 3). By degrees, and driven by hard necessity, these 
families spread over new territory, and came into contact 
with other families and groups. " All the evidence we 
possess, says Westermarck, tends to show that among our 
earliest human ancestors the family, not the tribe, formed 
the nucleus of every social group, and in many cases was 
itself perhaps the only social group" {" History of Hu- 
man Marriage," p. 538). In this social group the father 
ruled as king and priest, and as long as the father lived 
there was no majority for the sons. Their lives and their 
property were at the disposal of the absolute father- 
sovereign, and all who would live in the family must 
accept his authority. This made a firm and compact 
group which meant safety and protection to all within its 
circle. '' Such a group naturally broadens out in the 
course of time into the house or gens, and over this too, 
a chief kinsman rules " (Wilson, ibid., p. 7). New mem- 
bers may be admitted into this house, through a real or 
assumed blood-kinship, but they are all subject to the 
same authority. As time passes and the father of the 
family dies, his people deify him, and this becomes a new 
bond of union. The family is now a religious brother- 
hood, worshiping some common hero who has become a 
god, and thus the bond of blood is strengthened by the 
sanctions of religion. In course of time this house or 
gens broadens out, and comes into contact with other 
houses or groups. In the struggle that follows one or the 
other must go down, and here we observe two things: 
Sometimes this conquered gens finds some blood-kinship 
with the conquerors, in which case the weaker is absorbed 
by the stronger. Sometimes, however, the weaker is 
reduced to subjection, and we have the beginning of a 



THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 39 

servile class in the tribe. But this new group becomes a 
tribe, or clan. And this same process is continued and 
one tribe absorbs others, and these again unite to form the 
State. By and by this composite tribe obtains a local 
habitation and a name, and becomes a settled nation. 
■ * The family was the primal unit of political society, and 
the seed-bed of all larger growths of government " (Wil- 
son, '^The State," p. 13). 

The patriarchal family is no doubt one of the earliest 
forms of family life. The book of Genesis carries us back 
to the early times, and shows us this form of the family 
in full development. The patriarchal government was 
no doubt one of the earhest forms, and traces of it are 
to be found in many lands. The father had the right to 
govern his household ; authorship was the root of author- 
ity. In the early Semitic family the father was supreme 
over his household, even in questions of life and death. 
In the early Roman empire the father retained a pro- 
prietary right in his gens or household, and with this the 
State had little or nothing to do. 

Without attempting a formal discussion or criticism 
of this theory, it may be said that it fails to account 
for the State itself. It has to do with the forms through 
which the State passes in its growth, but it does not 
account for the causes and forces that create the 
State. By no possible means could the State have de- 
veloped out of the small unit called the family. The 
two institutions are different in essence, as the rights 
and powers which belong to the State wholly tran- 
scend those that inhere in the family. The right of 
the father to govern his household grows out of the fact 
of authorship; but this authority is necessarily limited to 
his children, and cannot be extended over aliens. Just so 
far as it is extended over others it conflicts with the unity 
0^ the family, and finds its justification in some other fact 



40 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

than in authorship. There may be some resemblance be- 
tween the father's rule over his children and the State's 
authority over its members; but it has not been shown 
that any actual State has grown out of the family. " The 
evidence of history shows that where society has not 
passed beyond the development of the family, there has 
been no national existence" (Mulford, ''The Nation," 

P- 39)- 

III. The Theory of Conquest. The origin of the State 

has been found in the conquest of the weaker by the 
stronger. According to this view, the State is the product 
of force. This theory, it may be said, has had many ex- 
ponents, and it is finding wide currency in these times. 
Thus Plutarch ascribes this saying to Brennus the Gallic 
king : '* The most ancient of all laws, which extends 
from gods to the beasts, gives to the stronger rule over 
the weaker " {" Life of Camillus "). In these later times 
Count Tolstoy opposes the State conception of life on 
the ground that the State is a usurpation. " Without the 
aggrandizement of self and the abasement of others, with- 
out hypocrisies and deceptions, without prisons, fortresses, 
executions, and murders, no power can come into exist- 
ence or be maintained" (Tolstoy, "The Kingdom of 
God is Within You," p. 242). As government begins in 
usurpation and self-aggrandizement, so it continues in 
social tyranny and oppression. 

This view is also advocated by many modern sociolo- 
gists, and in a way seems to be the sociological theory. " It 
is a commonplace of history that the unceasing agglomer- 
ation of communities has never been due to the mutual 
attraction of peoples. . . Not sentiment, but invariably 
force or the dread of force has called into being that most 
extensive of co-operations, the State" (Ross, "Social 
Control," p. 18). " The earliest state-building forces are 
greed and fear ; that is, groups ally themselves in order to 



THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 4I 

make or to resist attack. People dread the enemy, and 
hence cheerfully submit to the yoke of the war leader. 
They tremble before the predatory, and therefore rally 
around a power that can make law respected. These fear- 
forces are strongly seconded by the love of power which 
impels the masterful to supply more government than 
is needed. In time the absolute State arises in all its grim- 
ness and men start back in affright before the Franken- 
stein they have created" (Ross, ''The Foundations of 
Sociology," p. 175). Under such circumstances, a few 
wise and strong men who will agree to maintain order 
and repel the aggressors, are allowed to seat themselves in 
the saddle. Around these strong men, be they few or 
many, the great mass of the people gather themselves. 
Thus a little group is formed, compact and strong, that 
soon subdues any opposing groups. The great and grow- 
ing mass of evidence shows, says Professor Ross, that 
" the historical State, has in almost every instance taken 
its origin in the violent superposition of one people upon 
another. Born in aggression and perfected in exploitation, 
the State, even now, when it is more and more directed by 
the common will, is not easy to keep from slipping back 
into the rut it wore for itself during the centuries it was 
the engine of a parasitic class " (Social Control," p. 386). 
It must be confessed that governments have given too 
much reason for this theory of the State. But we are 
searching for origins, and are concerned not alone with 
results, but with causes. This view lies open to very 
serious objection, and it cannot stand in the light of all 
the facts. We may grant that might has been the basis of 
many of the governments of the world thus far, but this 
might does not serve as an adequate foundation of the 
State. For, what causal necessity is there between might 
and right? Force may have produced certain govern- 
ments and sustained them for a time, but upon force alone 



42 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

no great State has ever been built. Superior force and 
physical power can never add themselves up and yield a 
right. " Every polity, however rude, requires the ideas 
of right, and of law for the maintenance of right. Might, 
without these ideas, would not give rise to a common- 
wealth, but to a gang of robbers; to anarchy plus the 
sword" (Lilly, ''First Principles in Politics," p. 19). 
Besides, the theory before us fails to go to the root of the 
matter, and the doctrine contradicts itself at the most vital 
points. For one thing it recognizes only masters and 
slaves, and is thus a flagrant contradiction of human free- 
dom. For another thing " it contradicts the idea of Right 
or Law, which manifestly has a spiritual and moral sig- 
nificance; mere physical force ought to serve right and, 
if it pretends to be right, it has risen against its proper 
master " (Bluntschli, " The Theory of the State," p. 293). 
And last of all, it assumes that the fact of authority creates 
the sentiment of obedience, whereas the sentiment of 
obedience itself justifies authority. It is sometimes said 
that priestcraft— to take a somewhat parallel illustration- 
is the creator of religion ; that the priests have invented 
religion to justify their claims and to keep the people in 
submission. But this explanation is a complete inversion 
of the facts; for the presence of a priesthood is an 
evidence of religion among the people, and it is this 
religious sentiment that tolerates the assumptions of the 
priests. In like manner the strong aggressor may usurp 
the authority of the State and may rule with a high hand ; 
but the political instinct of the people accepts this usurpa- 
tion, and the tyrant appeals to this sentiment in justifica- 
tion' of his claims. This sentiment exists in men, other- 
wise they would not submit to the authority of one man. 
" A monarch is not remarkable for bodily strength or in- 
tellect, and yet millions permit themselves to be ruled by 
him. To say that men permit themselves to be governed 



THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 43 

contrary to their interests, ends, and intentions, is pre- 
posterous, since men are not so stupid. It is their need, 
and the inner power of the idea which urge them to this, 
in opposition to their seeming consciousness, and retain 
them in this relation" (Hegel, "The Philosophy of 
Right," sec. 281). Again: "Often it is imagined that 
force holds the State together, but the binding cord is 
nothing else than the deep-seated feeling of order which is 
possessed by all" (ibid., sec. 268). 

IV. The Social Contract. This theory is one of the 
most subtle and significant ever framed. During the last 
two hundred years no theory of the State has been more 
widely accepted, or exerted a more potent influence over 
political action. Some of the most illustrious names are 
connected with this theory, as Hobbes and Locke, Grotius 
and Kant, Rousseau and Jefferson; in exposition and 
application of this theory there has been created a litera- 
ture of incomparable power and richness ; men have ap- 
pealed to it against governments and in behalf of revolu- 
tion ; and two most significant documents, the American 
Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration 
of the Rights of ^lan and of the Citizen, are simply the 
formulations of this theory. It is not necessary for our 
purpose to attempt to trace the rise and development 
of this theory. It may be said, however, that it was sug- 
gested by Thomas Hooker in his '* Ecclesiastical Polity," 
in 1594; and Locke finds its underlying ideas plainly 
expressed in a speech of King James to Parliament in 
1609. Professor Willoughby shows that the whole feudal 
system of the Middle Ages was saturated with the ideas 
of this social contract. But the names of three men must 
forever be associated with the development and illustra- 
tion of the theory, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. 

It is assumed in this theory that men existed in what is 
called a state of nature, and that they were free, happy, 



44 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

and prosperous. In this state men were all equal, and 
all possessed certain natural and inalienable rights. Thus 
Rousseau declares in the opening chapter of " The Social 
Contract," that " Man is born free, and everywhere he is 
in chains." This man, in some ways one of the most 
potent personalities of the eighteenth century, was him- 
self little more than an echo, putting into clear and un- 
derstandable and popular terms the thoughts and theories- 
of other and greater thinkers. It had been assumed by 
Locke and Hobbes that men at first had lived in a state of 
nature, and they were more or less happy and contented. 
But this state of nature, free and desirable as it was in 
many respects, yet had some serious drawbacks and dis- 
advantages. Among these latter were the aggressions 
which men inflicted upon their fellows, and which seri- 
ously interfered with their happiness and prosperity. 
In this state of nature all men felt free to follow their own 
inclinations and interests without any respect to the rights 
and preferences of their neighbors. But such a state with 
all of its advantages, was a state of mutual fear and cease- 
less strife, and in such a condition there could be no 
law, and no justice. These men, dwelling in a state of 
nature, early felt the need of combination and co-operation 
for certain social and commercial purposes. These men 
voluntarily agreed to form a social State for the protec- 
tion of their rights and the effectuation of certain definite 
ends. The time came, however, when these men entered 
into covenant with one another and adopted certain 
rules and laws for their governance and security. But 
these laws and rules cannot execute themselves, and 
so it is necessary that certain men be chosen as 
rulers in the State who shall represent its authority 
and execute its decrees. According to Rousseau " The 
public force then requires a suitable agent to concentrate 
it, and put it in action according to the directions of 



THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 45 

the general will, to serve as a means of communication 
between the State and the sovereign, to effect in some 
manner in the public person what the union of soul and 
body effects in a man." This is, in the State, the function 
of the government, and is improperly confounded with 
the sovereign of which it is only the minister. 

What then is the government? An intermediate body 
established between the subjects and the sovereign for 
their mutual correspondence, charged with the execu- 
tion of the laws and with the maintenance of liberty, 
both civil and political (" Social Contract," Bk. Ill, 
chap. i). The various exponents of the theory differ 
somewhat in many details, and in none more markedly 
than in the question of sovereignty, but they all agree 
in this, that the source of all sovereignty is in the 
people themselves. Each man, by a natural and im- 
prescriptible right holds a certain proportion of sover- 
eignty, and the sovereignty of the State is simply the 
sum of these individual wills. Locke claims that this 
original compact between the members of the State must 
be renewed from generation to generation in the person 
of every citizen when he comes to the age of discretion. 
Xn Rousseau the distinction between sovereign and gov- 
ernment is hopelessly confused, and " while he makes 
.(government but the servant for executing the will of 
the State, he makes this will practically identical with 
;the popular demand. The permanence of all government 
and its authority is thus practically destroyed" (Wil- 
Houghby, " The Nature of the State," p. 79). 

< This view has had a marked influence upon the thought 
hnd life of mankind since Rousseau's time. It may be 

said to lie at the basis of the Revolution in France, and 
it finds expression in the Constitution of the United 
States; it is also the working theory in the democratic 
/States of to-day, both in America and in Europe. This 



46 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

theory did good service in opposing the arbitrary and 
monarchical governments which claimed to rule by divine 
right without being answerable in any way to the people. 
To attempt a formal criticism of it is not necessary, for 
this work has been well done by others. '' Natural 
Rights," by Professor Ritchie, and " The Nature of the 
State," by Professor Willoughby, may be named in this 
connection. There are, however, several counts in the 
indictment that may be here noted. 

For one thing, this theory rests upon a wrong interpre- 
tation of the facts of life and the nature of man. One may 
search history through and he will not find an instance 
of any State, however small or large, that has ever been 
formed in this way. The theory presupposes individuals 
as contracting, when the researches of Maine and others 
show that in early times law was applicable not so much 
to the individual as to the family, and that in fact, in 
those early times the individual as such counted for 
almost nothing. " In addition to this, there is, of course, 
a manifest absurdity in conceiving a sufficient menta? 
qualification for such a formal act on the part of a people 
in the very first stages of civilization " (Willoughby, 
" The Nature of the State," p. 117). i 

The theory also rests upon a complete misinterpreta- 
tion of the nature of man. In the first place no such 
men as this theory assumes have ever been found. On 
the contrary, everything confirms the statement of Prof. 
Max Miiller that, " Go where you will, no people is ever 
found without some form of government, with laws and 
religion, and the beginnings at least of a civil society.'*' 
"As far as we go back in the paleo-ethnology of man- 
kind," says Kropotkin, " we find men living in societies — 
in tribes similar to those of the highest mammals. . . So- 
cieties, bands, or tribes — not families — were thus the 
primitive form of organization of mankind and its 



\ 



THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 47 

earliest ancestors. This is what ethnology has come to after 
its painstaking researches" (Kropotkin, "Mutual Aid," 
p. 79). In human history, whatever has been found that is 
great and admirable and free has been found in governed 
communities. In nothing is the progress of a people in 
the scale of life so accurately measured as in the degree of 
their social co-operation and governmental control. Men 
who approximate the state of nature as it is called, 
are destitute of the things that make life w^orthy and 
admirable. 

There is another most fatal objection that may be 
filed against this theory. It assumes that men in a 
state of nature possess rights which are antecedent to 
any social order, and that men create the State that 
these rights may be conserved. But it is a delusion to 
suppose that what are called innate rights existed apart 
from society. For the very consciousness of the individ- 
ual and his rights implies a social consciousness and a 
social order. That is, the very conception of a person who 
claims rights for himself, assumes that there are other 
persons against whom he makes his claims. The very 
conception of the right implies that these persons are re- 
lated in some way. It is in and through the relation and 
inter-relation of members of a social order that the per- 
son comes to self-consciousness and learns to conceive of 
certain rights as belonging to his personality. The very 
ability to discuss and classify rights implies a society in 
which men are becoming conscious of the relations in 
which its members stand to one another. This social 
contract theory falls to the ground at its first steps, and 
utterly fails to explain the facts of life. 

I And last of all, the theory fails to account for the 
consciousness which impels men to form political associ- 
ations. Either there was a political consciousness prior 
to the contract or there was not. If the consciousness is 



48 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

prior to the contract, the theory is disproved at the very 
beginning. If the contract is the cause of the conscious- 
ness, the theory is also negatived, for this impHes rational 
action without reason and social fellowship without 
social consciousness, which are both absurd. It is very 
evident that no contract between individuals can possess 
a political character unless there is already present a 
social consciousness that is above and before the contract - 
itself. No number of individual wills can add themselves 
up and yield a common will. No surrender of any num- 
ber of personal rights can produce a social and political 
right. The State, which is the organ of the political con- 
sciousness of its members, cannot by any possibility, come 
into being out of the consciousness of isolated indi- 
viduals. In the words of Bluntschli ; " For practical 
politics this doctrine is in the highest degree dangerous, 
since it makes the State and its institutions the product of 
individual caprice, and declares it to be changeable ac- 
cording to the will of the individuals then living. . . 
It is to be considered, therefore, a theory of anarchy 
rather than a political doctrine" ("The Theory of the 
State," Bk. IV, chap. ix). 

V. The Natural Sociability of Man. This is the view 
of Bluntschli and others, and, with variations and modi- 
fications, it is the view that is more or less prevalent 
to-day. The author named declares that it is not enough 
to refute the current speculative theories, but we must en- 
deavor to discover the one common cause of the rise of 
States. This common cause he thinks we find in hum^m 
nature, which besides its tendency to individual diversity, 
has in it tendencies of community and unity. " Thus the 
inward impulse to society produces external organizatiojn 
of common life in the form of manly self-government- - 
that is, in the form of the State " (The Theory of th ^ 
State," Bk. IV, chap. x). 



THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 4Q 

This social tendency, we are told, works at first in- 
stinctively and unconsciously. The many look up, half 
with trust and half with fear, to a leader by whose cour- 
age and genius they are impressed, and whom they honor 
as the supreme expression of their community. At first 
this consciousness of community is found chiefly in the 
leaders of the people, but in time it extends itself among 
the more intelligent classes, until at last it permeates the 
lower orders in society and becomes active and effective 
in all. 

This view has many things in its favor, and it approxi- 
mates the true conception. It recognizes the necessity 
of the State, and it grounds the State in the nature of 
man. It declares that the State is the natural and ap- 
pointed work of man, and it recognizes the fact that it is 
a potent agency of progress in society. " The State is 
the fulfilment of the common order, and the organization 
for the perfection of the common life in all public mat- 
ters '' (Bluntschli, "The Theory of the State," Bk. IV, 
chap. x). So far as it goes, therefore, this theory is satis- 
factory enough, but it does not fully solve the problem 
before us. For '' to speak of the State as naturally cre- 
ated, makes of it an entity independent of man, uncreated 
by him, and as such, not requiring justification in his 
eyes. . . To say that political authority is natural neither 
answers the question as to how its empirical manifesta- 
tion is brought about, nor shows the manner in which its 
control over the individual is harmonized with the latter's 
natural freedom" ( Willoughby, "The Nature of the 
State," pp. 33, 34). 

This brings us to the last view as to the origin of 
thf: State. 

VI. The Origin of the State in the Nature of Man and 
the Purpose of God. In the statement of this view 
ik>everal things are to be noted. The first is what may be 



^O THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

called the fact of organic solidarity. The crowning dis- 
covery of this modern age, says President Moss, is the 
unity of the universe, the oneness of all things visible 
and invisible in one great system of matter and force and 
law. The world, it is becoming more and more evident, 
is an organic totality, and all things move together because 
all things are linked together. One thing is as it is 
because all other things are as they are. '' It is a 
mathematical fact," says Carlyle, "that the casting of 
this stone from my hand changes the center of gravity 
of the universe." The entire universe is one great system, 
and atom is linked with atom and star is bound to star 
by ties that are most real. But the facts of the physical 
and material world are only so many parables of human 
life and its relations, and from the one we may learn 
much concerning the other. 

When we come to the study of man we find that this 
fact of solidarity becomes most real and important. Man, 
by the very constitution of his being, is a creature of 
relationships ; in fact, it is in and through these relation- 
ships that he comes to maturity and power. It is impos- 
sible to be a person without being in a true sense a mem- 
ber of society, for it is in and through the Hfe of others 
that man comes to be himself. The law is written: 
You cannot live by yourself alone and be a man at all. 
The Creator has so linked the race together that no man 
can give the race the slip and rise into perfection by him- 
self. In the most real sense, it is true that we are mem- 
bers one of another and dependent the one upon the oth^er. 
The whole race is bound together in a solidarity of 
interests and responsibilities in which the one and the 
many are mutually means and ends. Adopting the figure 
of the apostle we may say that " The whole body of hu- 
manity fitly framed and knit together through that whic^i 
every person supplieth, according to the working in duCj 



{ 
J 



THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 51 

measure of each several part maketh the increase of the 
body unto the building up of itself in love." 

The second thing is this : that in all living beings there 
is an instinct and impulse toward association, and this is 
the most fundamental fact in life. It would be interest- 
ing to trace the beginnings of this instinct among the 
lowly forms of life, for it is found in the rudiments at 
least in creatures that are far down in the scale. The 
fact is, this principle of association is practically coeval 
with life itself and is rooted in the very nature of things. 
But we are considering the origin of the State, and so 
we are concerned more intimately with what may be 
called the subjective factors in the making of States; 
that is, those instincts and impulses which drazv men 
together and lead them to unite in social institutions. 
And the more we study this aspect of the question the 
more real and potent these factors appear. If one were 
searching for the beginnings of the political State it 
would be necessary to search far down among the social 
instincts of lowly creatures, for these instincts are every- 
where present with this difference: among the lowly 
creatures we find the instinct of mutual aid and the forms 
of social life; but we find also that this is unconscious 
and instinctive. But when we come to the world of man we 
find all this changed ; for the tendency which among ani- 
mals appears as an impulse and instinct more or less 
unconscious and automatic, among men appears as an im- 
pulse and appetency more or less conscious and rational. 
Because man is man, by nature a social and political being, 
some form of society is inevitable. The form that this 
society shall assume at any time or in any place will 
depend upon many incidental factors, and will vary ac- 
cording to the degree and quality of this sense of human 
fellowship and social obligation. The form of the State 
in any age and land is thus the expression of the political 



C2 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

consciousness of the people, and we can measure the 
quahty of this consciousness by the form which the State 

assumes. 

In fulfilment of their strongest imperatives, men have 
given expression to their political consciousness and 
founded political institutions. They have done this more 
or less unconsciously and spontaneously, but in all they 
have been working in harmony with the purpose of God 
in the world and with the meaning of their own nature. 
The State, like all other vital things, is a growth and not 
a manufacture. And since man is by nature a social and 
political being, the idea of the State is grounded m his 
very constitution and its formal appearance is only a 
question of time. And since man is a vital being, the idea 
of the State is itself a process of growth. Thus the idea 
of the State, which is implicit in man's constitution, be- 
comes explicit in and through the processes of history 
and the unfoldings of life. The idea creates the form and 
finds expression through it, and the form conserves and 
perpetuates the idea. Adopting the figure of Hegel we 
may say that " the idea of God and the will of God are the 
factors that enter into the making of society ; the one is 
the warp and the other is the woof in the vast arras 
web of universal history" (Hegel, ''Philosophy of 
History," Introduction). The idea of the State hence 
takes shape slowly, being hindered or retarded by circum- 
stances, such as nationality, intellectual development, and 

above all, religion. 

And thus we find that man is by nature a social and 
political being ; that some form of social fellowship and 
political co-operation is implicit in his very nature ; that 
the State itself becomes explicit in and through a natural 
proc^ess of development; that in the earlier stages this 
process may be more or less instinctive and unconscious, 
but in all the higher stages it is furthered and quickened 



THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 53 

by man's conscious choice and rational co-operation ; and 
that thus the State is here in fulfilment of the purpose of 
God and has its justification in the nature of man himself. 
In this conception of the origin of the State, we find that 
all of the causes that were named in the other theories have 
been more or less at work. There is a soul of truth in 
each of these theories, but they all err by defect in that 
they take a part for the whole and consider results that 
are much larger than their causes. 

This view, however, gives us the two things that we 
need for all clear and rational thought. It gives us at 
once the origin of the State and the justification for its 
existence. It grounds the State in the very nature of 
man and the purpose of God, and it contains a justifica- 
tion for its existence in the very nature of life itself. 



Ill 

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 

THE determination of the true functions of the State 
is one of the urgent and practical problems of our 
time. There could be no greater misfortune to society, 
than for men to proceed blindly, without any clear vision 
of the ends they are to seek and the methods they are to 
employ. This inquiry is all the more important in view 
of the growing complexity of society and the widening 
range of State activity. In the world as we find it, 
there is an ever-increasing diversity and differentiation, 
and we see society breaking up into distinct trades and 
classes, with the most minute division of labor and the 
most rigid delimitation of trades. Everything indicates 
that this process is to continue even more widely. But 
there is also an ever-increasing inter-relation and interde- 
pendence, and we are discovering that every man needs 
his neighbor and is dependent upon his co-operation. 

This imposes new responsibilities upon political ma- 
chinery and makes new demands upon modern statesmen. 
The State is slowly but surely extending its activity and 
multiplying its functions; and this process is likely to 
continue and even widen. There are those who view this 
tendency with alarm and declare that man is forging for 
himself the chains of a new slavery. There are others 
who regard it with unmixed satisfaction, and in fact, de- 
mand a much wider extension of State action. Between 
these two extremes stands a third class uncertain which 
course to take, whether to array itself with the former or 
with the latter. 
54 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 55 

The right conception of the State will give us the key 
to the true interpretation of the functions of the State. 
There are two methods that may be followed in this 
study. One may follow the historical and empirical 
method, and may consider the functions of the various 
States of the world; he may then compare these, noting 
those more or less recognized in all and rejecting those 
that seem sporadic and isolated. By this process he may 
obtain results suggestive and possibly helpful. But this 
process is questionable at best ; for no two peoples have 
the same characteristics and conditions, and the method 
most effective in one set may be wholly unworkable in 
different conditions. And this method fails to meet all 
the demands of life, for it takes no account of the ideal 
element in society. To know what is good for the State 
we must have some ideal of the State and some concep- 
tion of its mission. According to the teachings of so- 
ciology, " That is good for me, or for the world around 
me, which promotes the ongoing of the social process. 
That is bad for me, or for the world around me, which 
retards the ongoing of the social process" (Small, 
'' General Sociology," p. 676). This means that we must 
have some conception of the meaning and end of the 
social process in order to appraise any method or func- 
tion of the State. The other possible method for us is to 
adopt or to devise some ideal of the State and its func- 
tions, and then seek to bring the actual State up to the 
ideal standard. This method has its advantages, but at 
best it is questionable and may be unreal. States are 
growths and not manufactures. In view of this, it is 
possible that the better method of study is one that shall 
combine the two methods. We seek to know what are the 
functions now performed by the most advanced States; 
we seek to discover how far the State can promote 
certain great ends ; and then with some ideal of the true 



56 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

end of the State we inquire what are the functions that it 
must perform in order to fulfil its highest aims. 

In the development of political thought many attempts 
have been made to determine the essential functions of 
the State. It is needless to multiply quotations, but a 
few of the more significant statements may be given. 
" The powers that be are ordained of God," says the 
Apostle Paul. The ruler is the deacon of God unto men 
for good; rulers are set for the punishment of evil- 
doers and the praise of them that do well (Rom. 13 : 
1-4) . In old Rome a simple motto glittered upon the walls 
that in a way summed up all the legislation of that 
people : '' Salus populi suprema lex," '' the safety of the 
people is the supreme law." Aristotle, the father of po- 
litical science, declares that a State " exists for the sake of 
life ; and not for the sake of life only, but for the sake of 
good life. . . Whence it may be inferred that virtue must 
be the serious care of the State which truly deserves the 
name" (" Politics," Bk. Ill, sec. 9). In the preamble of 
the Constitution of the United States, we have the great 
words, " We, the people of the United States, in order 
to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure 
domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common Defense, 
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of 
Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain ?.nd 
establish this Constitution for the United States of 
America." In the Bills of Rights of many of the States 
of the Union this same purpose is affirmed in somewhat 
different language : " To safeguard and promote the 
three main pillars of the State, morality, religion, and edu- 
cation." These statements are definite enough so far as 
they go, but for purposes of careful thought it is necessary 
that they be analyzed and classified more accurately. 

In the progress of political thought many attempts have 
been made to arrange the functions of the State under 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 57 

certain definite categories. Thus we have them divided 
into Primary and Secondary Functions; we have them 
arranged in Essential and Non-essential Functions; we 
have them grouped into Positive and Negative Functions ; 
and so on indefinitely. These divisions are all more or 
less unsatisfactory, for the reason that they are arbitrary 
and introduce false distinctions ; any real function of the 
State is primary, essential, and positive. These divisions 
are unsatisfactory for the further reason that they sub- 
ject the lower interests of man to the care of what are 
called the primary and essential functions, and commit the 
more immaterial and spiritual interests to the keeping 
of the secondary and non-essential. Other writers have 
sought to classify these functions with reference to 
the varied interests of men and the different branches of 
government; and we have what are called the Police 
Functions, the Legislative Functions, the Judicial Func- 
tions, the Educational Functions, and the Economic 
Functions. These classifications have much in their favor, 
and, for purposes of study, are very useful. But they 
" cut things in two " and introduce divisions that are 
unreal and possibly mischievous. For these reasons this 
classification is suggested: The Defensive, the Con- 
servative, the Socializing, and the Promotive Functions. 
I. Defensive Functions. In all States that deserve the 
name the guaranteeing of human security has been re- 
garded as fundamental and essential. In early times it is 
quite possible that this need of protection was one of the 
chief factors in the making of the State. Even in 
later times the need finds clear expression in political 
constitutions. Thus, the preamble of the Constitution 
of the United States among other things, declares that 
government exists to establish justice, insure domestic 
tranquillity and provide for the common defense. Here 
is a clear recognition of the State's duty to provide for 



58 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

the common welfare. The State is the true unit, and 
each member is defended by it. The State has not always 
been true to its calling in this respect, for governments 
have sometimes been little other than organized oppres- 
sion, and have shown scant regard for either justice or 
tranquillity. And yet governments, even the worst, have 
done something for human welfare, and the worst 
government has been better than no government at all. 
But this term, the Defensive Functions, demands further 
analysis ; it is not a simple term. We find that the State 
sustains a double relation to its citizens: first to those 
who are without and secondly to those within its fold. 

Toward those without, the State appears as the de- 
fender and guardian of its members in person, life, 
property, and security. In its early stages this is about 
the only function assumed by the State ; but it is a func- 
tion everywhere recognized as fundamental. In all 
primitive societies the principle of solidarity is most 
fully operative, and in a real sense the individual is lost 
in the tribe. Any aggression against a member of the 
tribe is an aggression against the tribe itself, and it must 
be resented by the tribe in the person of its ruler. This, 
as we know, is not by any means the only function 
recognized in modern States, but it is a function which 
every State worthy of the name is ready to assert in 
clearest terms. A citizen of this republic, e. g., be he 
missionary or trader, who has been admitted into any 
foreign country may always appeal to the home govern- 
ment for protection, and the home government is bound 
to extend such protection. 

But the State also assumes the function of protecting 
its members from one another. It exists that it may 
guarantee to its weakest and lowliest member the secure 
possession and enjoyment of all his rights and privileges. 
These, that may be called the police functions of the State, 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 59 

are quite generally recognized in all States that are well 
ordered. Here we find that the individual members sur- 
render to the government the duty of protection, and the 
State accepts this responsibility and holds all its resources 
in pledge for its fulfilment. All experience shows that 
this work of insuring protection against aggression 
and securing redress for wrong done, cannot be left 
wholly to individual action and private initiative. Where 
wrongs are left to private redress a system of revenge 
and retaliation obtains, and the vendetta never ends. In 
addition, each person is a member of the State, and any 
wrong done the person is an attack upon the State. 
Hence, the State which assumes the protection of its mem- 
bers, must assert its authority and must insure its own 
existence by dealing with the offender. Besides all this 
the punishment which overtakes the wrong-doer must not 
be inflicted in a spirit of revenge ; it must be visited on 
the malefactor in the name of the people and for common 

security. 

This work of defense against the outer world and the 
maintenance of justice within its borders, are the two 
most elementary and irreducible functions of the State. 
Where these two forms of service are not performed by 
the government we have a condition of anarchy and not a 
civilized State. 

But this defensive function of the State has a much 
wider scope. The State is the natural guardian of those 
who are unable to protect themselves, and this lays many 
new responsibilities upon it. There are those who ad- 
vocate the doctrine of non-interference by the State, and 
in the name of scientific naturalism assert that the indi- 
vidual must be left to fight his battles for himself. It is 
only in and through this struggle for existence that each 
can prove his fitness for survival ; and to keep alive those 
who are unfit is to fly in the face of the whole cosmic 



6o THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

order. This being so, the functions of the State should 
be kept at the lowest minimum, and we must see to it 
that the State does not interfere with the stern but be- 
neficent processes of nature. That is to say, the State 
has no duty whatever to defend the weak and unfit from 
themselves and from others, beyond the general police 
functions of government. Such a view as this, it must 
be said, is at variance with the best thought of the 
world, and is based upon an utter misreading of the 
facts. Out in the jungle there is indeed a struggle for 
existence, and unfailingly the unfit go down. But human 
society is higher than the wild jungle melee for the simple 
reason that human society is subject to the sway of 
mental and moral principles. The authority of the State 
must be directed, therefore, in all spheres in which men 
need protection. 

The State that fully recognizes its duty in the direc- 
tion of defense, will not allow conditions to exist which 
make it impossible for any class of people to realize the 
innate possibilities of their being. Thus, in the early 
years of the nineteenth century, it was found that the 
condition of thousands of mill operatives and mine work- 
ers was utterly and deplorably bad. The Earl of Shaftes- 
bury and his colleagues in England clearly saw that there 
was here a great wrong against the life of these people. 
He plainly stated in his speeches and reports that there 
were thousands of persons in the land, who were utterly 
unable to defend themselves against these conditions, 
and so they were wholly unable to rise into a more worthy 
life. These persons by themselves could not change the 
economic conditions that virtually enslaved them and de- 
barred them quite hopelessly from any inheritance in 
life. The State, so the earl maintained, must intervene 
by its authority and must protect these helpless ones. 
Remedial measures were enacted despite bitter opposi- 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 6l 

tion; and the authority of the British Parliament exerted 
in proper legislation, ameliorated the condition of millions 
of English workers and made it possible for them to 
maintain their standing in society and become self- 
respecting citizens. The State is the natural defender of 
the person against aggression; it is charged with the 
maintenance of justice between man and man; and it 
must protect the weak and helpless against any forces and 
conditions that would hurt and oppress them. 

11. Conservative Functions. In order that men may 
live in security and society may fulfil its mission, there 
must be some authority that shall safeguard the neces- 
sary conditions. This agency is the State, and this 
conservation is a necessary part of its mission. 

That the State is charged with the conservation of 
the physical conditions of the people is quite generally 
recognized. Thus the government is charged with the 
protection of the streams from pollution and their pres- 
ervation. The man whose home is by the riverside cannot 
be allowed to use that river as he pleases, for the simple 
reason that his conduct must not be allowed to imperil 
the common safety. Nothing can be more plain than 
the duty of the State to conserve the sanitary conditions 
of the territory subject to its authority. The management 
of all matters pertaining to public sanitation and general 
healthfulness cannot be left to the individual initiative 
of the citizens themselves. As an illustration we may 
consider the matter of public health. 

There are those who insist that all such matters shall 
be left to the individual citizens to manage as they will, 
either by voluntary associations or by individual action. 
But suppose for a moment that this is left to free indi- 
vidual and voluntary control. It may happen that a num- 
ber of people who do not see the necessity for drains and 
sewers refuse to co-operate. Nay, worse ; they will not 



62 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

allow the sewer to cross their property in order to reach 
the river, and they refuse to abate the nuisance that is 
causing their neighbors discomfort. In this case it is 
evident that unless some conservative and coercive power 
can be employed, human security is at an end and human 
society is practically impossible. It is argued by the 
friends of political non-intervention, that persons so act- 
ing must be left severely alone to reap the consequences 
of their ignorance and stubbornness. That may be the 
most effective way, so far as they are concerned, but it 
may prove entirely too expensive for the other members 
of society. 

Again, clear thought recognizes that the climatic con- 
ditions of a country must be preserved, so far as they 
are under human control. The watercourses must be 
kept free from pollution; the arable land must not be 
unduly injured, greed and short-sightedness must be op- 
posed; in short, the general conditions of life must be 
safeguarded. No generation is an end in itself. Each 
is the heir of the past and the parent of the future. 
Prudence would seem to dictate that the men of every 
generation should give careful attention to those means 
and measures that are likely to improve the natural 
conditions of life and make it easier for the generations 
that are to come. The person is for a single generation, 
but " the State is for all generations. . . The State being 
the representative of social permanence, it ought to see 
that the general conditions of existence do not deteriorate 
among its people; this is the minimum which can be 
asked of it; what would be better still would be that it 
should improve them" (BeauUeu, "The Modern State," 
p. 202). The earth has been given to the children of 
men, and no generation can claim the exclusive title to it. 
But the physical conditions of a people are not the only 
ones that influence them. The welfare and happiness of 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 63 

men depend most intimately upon the economic and 
industrial conditions that prevail, and here the State 
has a clear duty. In every community there is a large 
class who possess no real inheritance in society, and are 
sadly handicapped in the race of hfe. It is not necessary 
here to consider whether this condition has come about 
wholly through the fault or the misfortune of the parties 
in question. In either case it would seem that the State 
has a clear duty. For the State must see to it that no 
section or class shall be allowed to deteriorate, either 
physically or economically. In case higher reasons do 
not prevail, there are lower reasons that should convince. 
We are all bound together in a solidarity of interests 
and responsibilities, and whatever endangers one en- 
dangers all. If the deterioration of the people has come 
about through excessive toil, low wages, and defective 
industrial conditions, the State must do what it can to 
remedy these defects. If the handicap that is upon a 
large section of the community has come about through 
control of natural resources by a few, the monopolization 
of the avenues of industry and the crowding of the 
weaker to the wall, the State must exert its authority to 
give all a fair opportunity. 

This means that the State which will conserve human 
conditions will see to it that all begin the race of life on 
a footing of equality. There is a growing tendency 
among political and sociological thinkers to question 
whether the present cruelty and waste in human society 
through irresponsible monopoly and uncontrolled compe- 
tition are not fraught with evil consequences. Professor 
Marshall maintains that " the present extreme inequal- 
ities of wealth tend in many ways to prevent human facul- 
ties from being turned to their best account." '' The 
fact is," as Benjamin Kidd points out, " a large pro- 
portion of the population in the prevailing state of so- 



64 THE CHRISTL\N STATE 

ciety take part in the rivalry of life only under conditions 
which absolutely preclude them, whatever their natural 
merit or ability, from any real chance therein. They 
come into the world to find the best positions not only 
already filled but practically occupied in perpetuity " 
(Kidd, '' Social Evolution," p. 232). In view of this, it is 
evident that the old Laissez Faire doctrine is entirely out- 
grown. The State that would fulfil its higher mission, 
must do what lies in its power to equalize opportunity 
and conserve the interests of the weaker as well as those 
of the strong. 

In many ways this conserving function of the State is 
recognized by all modern progressive governments. In 
fulfilment of this function there are certain principles 
of all intelligent legislation. Thus, where natural par- 
entage is manifestly defective or inefficient, the State 
intervenes and assumes the guardianship of the children. 
The State will not allow obscene pictures to be sold 
whose tendency is clearly to degrade. In the rightful 
exercise of its authority the State may remove the sources 
of physical contagion, and may employ its machinery to 
secure safe and sanitary conditions. It may forbid the 
entrance into the country of diseased cattle, and may 
even encourage intelligent and profitable cattle-raising. It 
may prohibit the prize-fight and the lottery ; it may also 
prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors. 
In short, it may do whatever lies within its power to 
secure safe and healthful conditions for all the people 
within its jurisdiction. According to a significant decision 
of the United States Supreme Court, '' No legislation can 
barter away the public health or the public morals. The 
people themselves cannot do it, much less their servants. 
Governments are organized with a view to their preserva- 
tion, and cannot divest themselves of the power to provide 
for them." 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 65 

A State, in the judgment of Aristotle, is the collective 
body of the citizens sufficient in themselves for all pur- 
poses of Hfe ("Politics," Bk. Ill, chap. i). The true 
end of the State, as defined by Bluntschli, is " the develop- 
ment of national capacities, the perfecting of the national 
life, and finally its completion." Therefore, it cannot 
control private life in what is essentially individual, but 
only so far as that life is affected by the common nature 
of all men and by the common necessities (" The Theory 
of the State," p. 325). 

There are those who make light of State action, and 
declare that everything must be left to the control of 
private parties and voluntary associations. No doubt 
there are many things which should be left to individual 
initiative ; there is no mystic chemistry in the State by 
which man's folly can be transmuted into social wisdom. 
" The State, as a matter of fact, invents nothing, and 
never has invented anything" (Beaulieu, "The Modern 
State," p. S^). At best, it is the social machinery through 
which men act in bringing about certain social results, 
and by the nature of the case it suffers from the defects 
of all machines. But while all this is true, while many 
things may be left to private initiative, it is evident that 
there are many important interests which would be neg- 
lected if left in private hands. The fact is, humanity 
has progressed thus far by not letting things take their 
own course, but by directing them by intelligent and moral 
ends. " The history of progress is the record of the 
gradual diminution of waste. The lower the stage the 
greater is the waste involved in the attainment of any 
end. . . When we come to human society, the State is the 
chief instrument by which waste is prevented. The mere 
struggle for existence between individuals means un- 
checked waste. The State by its action, can in many 
cases, deliberately and consciously, diminish this fearful 

E 



66 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

loss. By freeing the individual from the necessity of a 
perpetual struggle for the mere conditions of life, it can 
set free individuality and so make culture possible. An 
ideal State would be one in which there was no waste at 
all of the lives, the intellects, and the souls of individual 
men and women" (Ritchie, "Principles of State Inter- 
ference," p. 50). 

III. Socializing Functions. There is another large 
class of functions, performed alike by the lowest as 
well as by the highest States, that can best be described 
by the term Socializing Functions. By sociaHzing func- 
tions of the State we mean the harmonization of all inter- 
ests therein and their conscious co-operation in behalf 
of social progress (Small, "General Sociology," chap, 
xxiv). In a sense this class of functions includes all 
those that have been named or that may be named; but 
in a most true sense also this class of functions involves 
aspects of social activity that are not considered in any 
of the other categories. Whatever promotes social bet- 
terment comes within its province. 

In society as we find it there are all kinds of individuals 
and classes, and these, because of their divergent interests, 
are more or less in a chronic state of conflict. How can 
this struggle between individuals and interests be limited 
to the smallest degree? How can they be so correlated 
and harmonized that social peace may take the place of 
social conflict? And how can all these be so guided and 
directed that they all shall work together for the perfec-' 
tion of the social process? These questions are among 
the most fundamental and practical that man can consider, 
and upon their right solution depend many issues in social 
progress. There are two directions in which this socializ- 
ing function of the State may be noted, the socializing of 
individuals and the harmonizing of interests. Under the 
first division may be classed all those efforts of the State 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 67 

to define the relations of man with man and to train them 
in the divine art of Uving together. 

The primary interest of every man, as of every animal, 
is the sheer effort to keep alive. One of the inevitable 
forms of this interest is what may be called the food 
interest, and this is as true of cave men as of modern 
philosophers. But there are other interests that assert 
themselves, and so we have a list that runs along the 
whole scale of human life. Life, as we know it, may 
not be a free fight, with every living being fighting with 
every other, but life in one aspect at least may be de- 
scribed as a struggle for existence, with the survival of 
the fittest. The amount of food that is available at any 
one time for beast or man is wofuUy limited, and hence 
there is a constant competition for the choicer portions. 
There are not enough warm places in the sun for all to 
enjoy themselves, and so there is a constant struggle for 
place. In the lower ranges of life these forces act in a 
more or less instinctive and unconscious way. But when 
we enter the world of man we find that this socializing 
process is more or less under the direction of conscious 
and moral powers. In a colony of ants the various 
members arrange themselves in an instinctive way with 
little or no initiative of their own. In a hive of bees the 
same process is seen, and while the order is most wonder- 
ful, it is yet almost wholly instinctive, if not automatic. 
But when we come to a human group or tribe we find 
that a new factor is at work, and this acts in a more or 
less conscious and rational way in establishing some 
modus Vivendi. This factor or agency is what may be 
called the State. 

The State which we have defined as the organ of man's 
political consciousness is thus one of the agencies whereby 
the socialization of man's life is promoted. Thus the 
State serves a useful purpose in socializing and civilizing 



68 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

the individuals ; that is, it develops within them a con- 
sciousness of kind, and promotes the social process. The 
State, however sadly it may have failed in its mission, 
has yet done much to repress and discourage the indi- 
vidualistic and unsocial impulses of men and to encourage 
and foster the social and sociable impulses. Its service 
in these directions cannot well be overestimated. 

Under the second division of this subject are compre-; 
hended all those efforts of the State to adjust the different 
classes of conflicting interests, and thus to secure the wel- 
fare of all. " In the beginning," says Professor Small, 
" were interests." " An interest is a plain demand for 
something regardless of everything else." '' An interest 
is unequivocal, intolerant, exclusive" (Small, "General 
Sociology," pp. 196, 201). We have seen that the various 
individuals in society have various interests of their own, 
and each tends to seek that interest which to him seems 
most important at the time. But as we look at human 
society, we find that these individuals arrange themselves 
in groups and classes and parties, according to the inter- 
ests that are represented, and whereas before we had a 
conflict of individuals, now we have a conflict of groups 
and parties. This warrants the conclusion that " the 
social process is a continual formation of groups around 
interests, and a continual exertion of reciprocal influ- 
ence by means of group action" (Small, ibid., p. 209). 
It is needless to describe in detail the groups and parties 
and classes that form themselves around certain interests 
and become their representatives and defenders. These 
interests, as described by Ratzenhofer and Small, range 
through the whole gamut of human life from the universal 
interest of sustenance, through the kinship interest, the 
national interest, the creedal interests, the pecuniary 
interests, the class interests ; and these last again 
divide and subdivide into many minor interests of 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 69 

manufacture, trade, capital, culminating in the rank in- 
terests and corporate interests (Small, " General Soci- 
ology," p. 252). Professor Ross groups these interests 
somewhat differently into the economic, the political, the 
religious, and the intellectual interests, but he declares 
that these are the interests which constitute in effect 
the chief history-making forces (Ross, '' Foundations of 
Sociolog}^" p. 170). We find as the culmination of 
this process that is going on in society that " The various 
institutions, political, ecclesiastical, professional, indus- 
trial, etc., including the government, are devices, means, 
gradually brought into existence to serve interests that 
develop within the State" (Small, ibid., p. 233). 

In order that men may live together at all, and that 
society may become possible, these conflicting and clash- 
ing interests must be correlated and harmonized. That 
this may be done there must be some agency or institu- 
tion comprehensive enough to represent all these diverse 
interests. This agency, it is evident, must be something 
more than the agency of some one interest; it must be 
in the most real sense the representative of all. This 
agency of the common interest, this representative of the 
common life, is nothing less than the State, and the special 
function of the State in representing and harmonizing all 
interests we may call the sociaHzing function. Thus 
" The State is a union of disunions, a conciliation of con- 
flicts, a harmony of discords. The State is an arrange- 
ment of combinations by which mutually repellent forces 
are brought into some measure of concurrent action." 
" The State is a working compromise between the un- 
socializing and the socializing possibilities of individual 
selfishness " (Small, ibid., pp. 252, 332). This socializing 
function of the State is second to none in importance, and 
deserves more consideration than it has hitherto received. 
In its exercise the State can do much to mitigate the 



70 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

severity of the social struggle and to conserve the inter- 
ests of the weaker. In every society there are persons 
who are unsocial and selfish, who seek their own interests 
without any reference to the interests of others. This 
selfish spirit may manifest itself in many ways; it may 
appear in the outlaw who commits aggression by physical 
force; it may appear in the monopolist who corners the 
necessaries of life. It may incarnate itself in some cor- 
poration or institution or system, ecclesiastical or 
economic, that regards its own interests as chief and 
tries to bend all others thereto. Under such circum- 
stances the State has a very clear duty and an important 
function. It is the duty of the State to protect its mem- 
bers from aggression, be that aggression individual or 
corporate; it is its duty to make it possible for the just 
man to compete on fair terms with all other men. Thus 
far in the history of human thought this socializing func- 
tion of the State has had a somewhat restricted applica- 
tion, but the time has come when it must be exercised in 
many new directions. It has been assumed that the State 
will protect its members from physical force ; that it will 
protect its members in reputation and property ; and, in a 
general way, it may be said that the State has fulfilled 
this part of its office. It is, however, more and more be- 
coming evident that the State must protect its members 
from aggression of a more subtle and cruel character; 
that it must exert a more socializing and civilizing influ- 
ence in society. 

There are two impulses, never stronger than to-day, 
that are pretty constant in human nature — the love 
of money and the love of power. These impulses lead 
to combinations and corporations, the representatives of 
certain great and controlling financial interests. The 
man who would live and trade must either come into these 
combinations or he must accept the hard option of com- 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 7^ 

oetine with the almost certain prospect of ultimate ex- 
tinction In view of this, it is evident that the State 
has a most important function to fulfil in socializmg the 
competing interests of society and in elevating the plane 
of social action. It can establish a legal plane of compe- 
tition and can provide standing-ground for every man 
It can define the conditions under which manufacture and 
trade must be conducted, and thus make it possible for 
the moral man to compete on fair terms with all others. 
It can socialize the whole life of man by restraining ag- 
gression and make it possible for the just and moral man 
to maintain his footing. It lies within its proper function 
to determine the character of such competitive action as 
shall take place, to define the terms on which all economic 
action shall be conducted, and to make it possible for the 
most conscientious and social members of society to com- 
pete on the human plane and not on the jungle plane. 
'' The matching of strength against weakness is contrary 
to fighting codes; equal armor and equal weapons^ were 
the rule of knighthood" (Professor J. B. Clarke, The 
Philosophy of Wealth," p. 165). "It is utterly illogical 
to say that aggrandizement by physical force should be 
forbidden, while aggrandizement by mental or legal fic- 
tion should be permitted. It is absurd to claim that in- 
justice committed by muscle should be regulated while 
that committed by brain should be unrestricted " (Ward, 
" Psychic Factors of Civilization," p. 322). 

This socializing function of the State is second to 
none in importance, and it promises to play a much larger 
part in the future than in the past. It is probable that this 
function will be manifested in a greater extension of 
State action in the realms of man's social and industrial 
interests. Thus far these realms have been very jealous 
of their own prerogatives, and have resented all State 
action as an interference with their rights. But it is 



7^ THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

becoming increasingly evident that the State cannot 
allow its authority to be denied in this way; nor can it 
tolerate any influences and interests that are clearly un- 
social and destructive in their tendencies and actions. 
The State must determine the plane on which men shall 
live and trade and compete; it must persuade or compel 
the different interests of society to subordinate their spe- 
cial interest to the one common interest; in a word, it 
must do all in its power to harmonize and socialize the 
divergent elements of society and to train them all in the 
divine art of living together. 

IV. Promotive Functions. The State has an impor- 
tant function to fulfil in promoting the welfare of man. 
According to Aristotle a State ''exists for the sake 
of a good life, and not for the sake of life only. . . 
Whence it may be inferred that virtue must be the serious 
care of a State which truly deserves the name " (" Poli- 
tics," Bk. Ill, Sec. 9). According to Locke '' The end of 
government is the good of mankind." According to the 
Apostle Paul civil authority is appointed of God for the 
good of man (Rom. 13 : 1-6). It is not necessary to 
consider in detail the many things that the State may do 
in behalf of human progress, but a few lines of action 
may be suggested. 

The State can do much to promote social well-being 
by removing the obstacles that hinder and disqualify men 
for free development. It is clearly the duty of the State 
to make possible a free, worthy, human, and moral life 
for all its members. The State is called to consider 
not only the best interests of the largest number, but the 
highest interests of the whole number. It is clearly its 
duty to create conditions which shall give every person a 
fair fighting chance for life and happiness. 

Again, the State can do much in promoting human 
well-being by providing that every person shall have a 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 73 

fair standing in society. Every child born into the world 
has a claim to the common inheritance of earth, air, and 
water; it has birth-right to a fair chance for life, property, 
and happiness, and any society that ignores these claims 
and rights is essentially unjust. There is one principle 
that we need to keep in mind in all our discussion of this 
question, that no man in any generation is to do anything 
that shall narrow the range of opportunity or mortgage 
the inheritance of succeeding generations. " The freedom 
to do as they like on the part of one set of men may in- 
volve the ultimate disqualification of many others, or of a 
succeeding generation, for the exercise of rights " (Green, 
"Principles of PoHtical ObHgation," Sec. 210). The 
men of one generation may justly complain if by the 
action of a preceding generation they are obliged to begin 
the race of life seriously handicapped. The obverse of 
this is true, and the men of the present generation should 
hence take thought for the generations that are to come, 
and should seek to create conditions which shall make for 
human equality and social peace. The State and not the 
individual is the representative of this permanent life of 
a people, and hence it follows that the State must hold 
the balance even between the generations and give each its 
due. 

Once more : there are many things that the State can 
do in a more direct and positive way in promoting human 
well-being. Removing obstacles is not by any means the 
only thing. It is becoming an accepted principle among 
all progressive peoples that the State may exercise its 
authority in promoting education, in spreading intelli- 
gence, and in fostering philanthropy. It must be said, 
however, that on this question there is a marked differ- 
ence of opinion among social and political thinkers. Thus 
we have those who take the extreme position, with Her- 
bert Spencer, that the State has nothing to do with such 



74 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

matters, and whenever it meddles here it transcends its 
sphere. There are others who take the opposite extreme 
and maintain that it is both the right and the duty of the 
State to provide for the full education of all its members, 
in both intellectual and moral life. The true course 
seems to lie between these extremes, and teaches that the 
State has the right and the duty to maintain for its citizens 
the conditions under which the free exercise of their 
faculties is possible (Lilly, " First Principles in Politics," 
p. 59). But the State may do much more than this and 
still maintain this middle course; in fact, the more ad- 
vanced States to-day are doing much more than provide 
the mere rudiments of an education. The welfare of 
the people is the chief concern of the just government, 
and that this welfare may be promoted it is necessary 
that the material interests of the people be considered. 
Not only so, but the State needs quaHfied and trained men 
for all departments of its life and service in civil affairs, 
in industrial, and military life. In order that these ends 
may be fully and generally secured the State may fairly 
and justly establish departments of forestry and com- 
merce, of labor and education ; it may establish and en- 
dow normal schools and State universities, and it may 
create bureaus of charities and corrections, and may print 
and disseminate literature bearing upon all the questions 
of national and social welfare. 

There are four principles — social axioms they ought to 
be called — that may be of service: The effort of 
society should always be greatest where the need is 
sorest. The State that is under obligation to punish 
and restrain the criminal is under equal obligation 
to remove the causes which make the criminal. The 
State that confesses its obligation to care for its dependent 
and defective members should confess the equal obligation 
to prevent the continuous creation of such dependent and 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 75 

defective classes. The method of prevention is a great 
deal cheaper and easier than the method of reformation, 
and it is also more Christian and more hopeful. A few 
suggestions in application of these principles may be 
offered. 

For one thing, the State must encourage all those 
investigators who are seeking to know the causes of dis- 
ease and crime. We must know the causes of these dis- 
tressful phenomena of society, the criminal, the tramp, 
the insane, the idiotic ; we must seek to remove the causes 
of these things, and we must labor to secure a larger 
proportion of sane, healthy, well-endowed, morally dis- 
posed people in the community. The State must put its 
resources in pledge in behalf of its weakest and least 
promising members that they may be lifted up into 
strength and fitness. In this work the wise State will 
co-operate with all the other agencies of man-making, 
such as the family and the church, that human life may be 
touched and influenced on all sides. The unfit must not 
be allowed to remain unfit, but must be transformed. But 
more important than this, society must take adequate 
precautions against the needless multiplication of these 
dependent and defective members. The State must go 
behind results and must seek to change causes, and this 
work it cannot evade nor deny. That is, the State must 
now employ its resources and exert its authority in crea- 
ting conditions that will prevent the making and multiply- 
ing of the weak and the defective. This is a great under- 
taking, and it may require long generations for the most 
advanced society to approximate the goal. But it is 
something to know the direction in which progress lies, 
and to consider what brings man nearer to the true 
standard. The progress of man and the perfection of 
society are the supreme concern of the State. 

Growing out of all this is the function of the State in 



76 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

promoting the moral welfare of its people. All clear 
thought recognizes that the national character is the 
resultant and outcome of individual character; far the 
quality of the elements determines the quality of the 
mass. Now, since this is true, even to truism, it would 
seem that the State which has any concern for its own 
moral character and social stability, must concern itself 
very intimately with the moral life of its citizens. At the 
same time it must be remembered that it can do little in a 
direct way to achieve these results; it can decree moral 
statutes, but it cannot create the moral will ; it can create 
certain social machinery, but it cannot manufacture moral 
character. There is no civil enactment and political ma- 
chinery that can generate moral life and build a righteous 
society out of unrighteous men. In view of this there 
are many men who maintain that the State can do nothing 
whatever to promote human virtue and morality; the 
machinery of the State is too coarse, they assert, for such 
delicate work, and hence the State would better limit itself 
to its true and proper functions. Herbert Spencer was 
never more clearly in the right than when he said that 
there is no form of government that can bring golden 
conduct out of leaden instincts. 

But a more careful consideration of all the factors will 
show that there are many things that the State can do and 
should do, in behalf of the moral life of its people. No 
one claims that it is possible to make men good by law ; 
but every one with any discernment knows that it is easily 
possible for the State to deal with conditions that make 
it doubly difficult for men to be good at all. The State 
can make it possible for men to live and labor on the 
moral plane; the State can remove the artificial barriers 
which society erects and can equalize opportunity for 
all; the State can remove the stumbling-blocks that are 
placed in the way of men and abolish the agencies that 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 'J'J 

are clearly demoralizing; the State can apply the moral 
law to the civil organization of society and can seek to 
prepare every person for full citizenship. 

Thus far the primary, defensive, poHce functions of the 
State have bulked very large in the thoughts of men, 
and it has done a great work in these directions. In the 
more progressive modern States other functions have been 
recognized also, and much attention has been given to 
educational matters and to economic questions. But it is 
becoming more evident every day that there are whole 
ranges of functions beyond these, and men are beginning 
to consider what may be called the social and moral func- 
tions of the State. Men are beginning to see that the 
functions of the State are not negative and defensive only, 
to restrain the evil-doer and to punish crime, but pro- 
motive and positive also, to direct social progress and to 
further human well-being. As time goes by these nega- 
tive functions will more and more sink into the back- 
ground, and these positive functions will more and more 
fill the foreground. Herbert Spencer maintains that the 
State must prepare for its own decease, and must hasten 
the day when it will be unnecessary. On the contrary, 
as humanity advances toward its goal and society be- 
comes more complex, the State will become more and 
more necessary, and will fulfil other functions that are 
now unrecognized. " The State," says Bluntschli, " is 
not an arrangement for the purpose of taming the evil 
passions. It is not a necessary evil, but a necessary 
good. Only by the realization of the State can peoples 
and humanity, taken collectively, manifest their real in- 
ward unity and attain to free corporate existence. The 
State is the fulfilment of the common order, and the or- 
ganization for the perfection of common life in all public 
matters" (''The Theory of the State," p. 302). "The 
true functions and aims of the State," he maintains, " are 



78 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

the development of the natural capacities, the perfecting 
of the national life, and finally its completion" (ibid., 
321). The time is coming when, in the words of Ruskin, 
" men may indeed begin to take serious thought whether 
among national manufactures that of souls of a good 
quality may not at last turn out a quite leadingly lucrative 
one" ("Unto This Last," Essay II). 



IV 

THE IDEAL OF THE STATE 

THE conception of the State is one thing, and the 
ideal of the State is quite another. The conception 
has to do with the formal nature and essential character- 
istics of actual States. The ideal of the State, on the 
other hand, presents a picture in the splendor of imagin- 
ary perfection, as not yet realized, but to be striven for 
(Bluntschli, " The Theory of the State," p. 15). Hence, 
in speaking of the ideal of the State we mean that ideal 
which men cherish, which they regard as the perfect 
goal, and which they seek to have realized. 

In these later times men are gaining what has been 
called the sense of humanity, and society is coming to 
what may be described as social consciousness. In the 
natural order we find that the process of development 
below man has gone forward in a more or less uncon- 
scious and instinctive way. But with the advent of 
man a new factor is introduced, and this changes the 
whole result. Now the process of human progress is more 
or less subject to the conscious and rational action of man 
•himself. The human race as we know it, is in process of 
becoming ; the lowest members have indeed risen far above 
the animal stage; but the highest members have not yet 
attained the final goal. Man, civilized and rational — that 
is, man moral and self-conscious, stands midway in the 
process, himself the maker of his own destiny. Man, 
social and political, as we find him in the more civilized 
lands to-day, is leaving the things that are behind and is 
reaching unto the things that are before. His greatest 

79 



8o 



THE CHRISTIAN STATE 



need is some social ideal and human synthesis which shall 
give meaning to his life and direction to his efforts. 

In the development of political and social thought many 
attempts have been made to define the relations of man 
with man, to indicate the goal of the State, and to formu- 
late some ideal of human society. The views and ideals 
of the State that have prevailed may be classified under 
four heads : the Anarchical, the Individualistic, the Social-^ 
istic, and the Fraternal. These four types have many 
representatives in the world to-day, and one or more of 
them lies at the basis of every system of political philos- 
ophy and every programme of State action. 

I. The Anarchistic Type. This word anarchy in itself 
is destitute of evil content. It has come to be the 
synonym of disorder and riot, of lawlessness and crime, 
but this is reading into the term our own ideas. Used 
in its primary and literal meaning it denotes merely a 
state of society without any recognized and authoritative 
government. As defined by Professor Huxley anarchy 
is that form of society in which the rule of each individual 
by himself is the only government recognized ("Col. 
Essays," I, p. 393). Persons of very different mental 
and moral worth hold the anarchical theory of society, 
and these may be divided roughly into two groups. 

There are, first, the revolutionary anarchists who avow 
as their aim the overthrow and annihilation of all govern- 
ments and States. The exponents of this creed bear dif- 
ferent names, but they agree in certain main particulars. 
In Russia they were known recently as Nihilists, and now 
as Red Hundreds ; in France and Belgium as Red Inter- 
nationals ; in England and the United States as Anarchists. 
According to Bakunin, the father of nihilism, the first 
mission of the disciples of this new gospel Is the destruc- 
tion of every lie known to man. The first is God. The 
second lie is right. Might invented the fiction of right 



THE IDEAL OF THE STATE 8l 

in order to insure and strengthen her reign : " When 
you have freed your minds from the fear of a God, and 
from that childish respect for the fiction of right, then all 
the remaining chains which bind you, and which are called 
science, civilization, property, marriage, morality, and 
justice, will snap asunder like threads. Let your own 
happiness be your only law. But in order to get this law 
recognized and to bring about the proper relations which 
should exist between the majority and the minority of 
mankind, you must destroy everything that exists in the 
shape of State or social organization. . . Our first work 
must be the destruction and annihilation of everything as 
it now exists. You must accustom yourselves to destroy 
everything, the good with the bad ; for if but an atom of 
this old world remains the new will never be created " 
(Speech of Michale Bakunin at Geneva, in 1868). 

The nihilists, it may be said, represent the extreme wing 
of the anarchical party, and throw chief emphasis upon 
the work of destruction. Other anarchists are not so pro- 
nounced in their appeal to force for the destruction and 
abolition of everything that exists in the form of State 
institutions and social control. But, none the less, they 
affirm that all social regulation is wrong in principle and 
subversive of human welfare, and hence must be ended as 
speedily as possible. Some anarchists, it ought to be said, 
regard this negative work of destruction as the clearing 
of the ground for what they call the new and better order 
of society. The State, as it now exists, they all claim, 
is an unnecessary evil, and hence government must be 
completely destroyed. They insist that some form of 
social co-operation will be evolved in due time that will 
be better than the present tyrannical system ; but they all 
insist also that whatever government may exist in the 
good time coming must be entirely voluntary, and must 
exert no coercion over the individual. 



82 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

There are, secondly, what may be called the philosoph- 
ical anarchists, of whom there are many varieties in the 
world. They all agree in this particular at least, that 
all forms of government are unnecessary and evil, and 
should be repudiated. In this category are to be found 
some men and women of great literary and artistic power, 
such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Prince Kropotkin, 
Maxim Gorky and Count Tolstoy, Karl Marx and Leonid 
Andriew. Some of these, it may be said, are confessed 
sociaHsts, but they also believe that the present order of 
society is wrong and must be ended. They differ, how- 
ever, from the more destructive anarchists in the main in 
their contention that this change must come about by 
more peaceful means. One of the foremost advocates of 
this view of society is the Russian nobleman, Count 
Leo Tolstoy. In the name of humanity and Christianity 
Tolstoy frames his indictment against the State-conception 
of life, and in the name of Christ and reason he pro- 
nounces the State an unnecessary evil. The State may 
cease to be, he maintains, and man will lose nothing but 
his chains and his wrongs, while humanity will gain im- 
measurably in security and happiness. 

In many respects this titled Russian, who for the sake 
of the truth in Jesus as he sees it, has given up his title 
and is living the life of a peasant, is a standing rebuke 
to the easy-going and complacent lives of men who call 
themselves followers of the Son of man. In Russia — in 
fact, throughout all Europe — this man has millions of 
disciples, and many of these are preaching his doctrines 
with an increased emphasis and a terrible persistency. 
In America also there are many disciples of this doctrine, 
and in every city there are groups of men who are preach- 
ing the new gospel of freedom from the wrongs and 
usurpations of governments. But with it all one must 
admit that the writings of Tolstoy are full of crude and 



THE IDEAL OF THE STATE 83 

perverted interpretations of Scripture, and are based upon 
a wrong reading of the facts of life. Society cannot be 
resolved into an anarchy of good individuals, where each 
may be left free to do that which is right in his own 
eyes without any supervision and direction. His objec- 
tions to the State grow out of a narrow and limited 
acquaintance with the various governments of the 
world. Tsarism, which is irresponsible monarchy 
raised to the last power and maintaining itself by the 
sanctions of religion, furnishes the ground for his indict- 
ment. But there are governments in the world against 
which hardly one of his objections applies, and where 
they apply at all the evil grows out of the misuse of 
government and is not an essential element in government 
itself. It must be remembered that governments are 
human institutions and they must partake more or less 
of the imperfections which are characteristic of the 
human nature that controls them. 

In a simple and select condition of society it might be 
possible for men to live without government of any kind, 
but in a complex society the weak and backward members 
would be left without any adequate safeguards. Tolstoy 
would probably answer, as others have done, that there 
should be no weak and backward members ; this may be, 
but they do exist, and some account must be taken of 
them. One may agree with Tolstoy that much would 
be gained by giving morality and religion a larger place 
in human life, but moral and religious appeals are slow 
and uncertain with many men. " Society is not an open 
common in which profane feet are left to tread all plants 
into the mire; it is at liberty to set up suitable safe- 
guards for every good and beautiful thing" (Bascom, 
"Social Theory," p. 297). The good which is won for 
the weaker is of greater moment than the liberty which is 
taken from the bad. Men may complain of governments. 



84 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

but the fact remains that the best goods of Ufe are found 
in governed communities. 

According to the doctrines of anarchy, of the better 
sort, the absence of all government does not mean the 
absence of all association. The more enlightened an- 
archists, of whom there are many, simply mean the ab- 
sence of enforced association and compulsory submission. 
If an individual does not wish to co-operate no restraint 
shall be employed; he must be left to reap the beneficent 
or baleful results of his freely chosen course. But society 
need not suffer because of this, for it is maintained that 
the more orderly in a community may combine against 
the disorderly to secure order and justice. For very 
primitive and simple conditions this might prove satis- 
factory, but it would fail utterly in an advanced and com- 
plex society. The moment a majority began to enforce 
their decrees against the disorderly minority, that mo- 
ment we have the beginnings of government. The mi- 
nority are coerced ; they are not free to do as they please, 
and this compulsion is none the less real though it proceed 
from a voluntary society rather than a political govern- 
ment. 

Again, it is evident that such a voluntary association 
does not provide adequate safeguards for the weaker 
and more backward members of society. The confirmed 
anarchist will at once answer that in this ideal order, 
there will be no such weak and backward persons. But, 
we must deal with things as they are. The weak and 
backward brothers are here, and some account must be 
taken of them. To leave them to struggle alone in the 
battle of life, to stand by unconcerned while they are 
trodden under foot on the plea that they are unfit and 
should not survive, is to abandon every human instinct 
and revert to the jungle plane of life. Nay, even in the 
jungle, as one of these foremost apostles of the anarchical 



THE IDEAL OF THE STATE 85 

gospel shows, we find the beginnings of mutual aid and 
co-operation (Kropotkin, ''Mutual Aid"). 

The sane philosophical anarchists will admit that some 
voluntary association among individuals is necessary if 
man is to live in peace and to make progress. Many 
of them advocate such associations, but maintain that 
they must be wholly voluntary. But any kind of associ- 
ation will find that it must either resort to compulsion in 
some cases or go wholly out of business. According to 
the anarchists' first commandment : Thou shalt not allow 
any man to interfere with the liberty of any other ; every 
man may mind his conduct or mend his drains as he 
pleases. Thus the efforts of the good-intentioned many 
will be negatived by the ignorance or selfishness of the 
few. It is evident that these associations must possess 
some compulsory power. But the moment there is as- 
sociation and compulsion there is the beginning of the 
political State (Huxley, ''Administrative NihiHsm"). 
" As a system of rational politics, anarchism is without a 
logical basis. While it denies the right or utility of 
political action in general, it opens the way to the intro- 
duction of a compulsion that is not to be distinguished 
from it in essence, and which is in addition arbitrary and 
incapable of limitation or regulation according to precise 
principles" (Willoughby, "The Nature of the State," 

320). 

II. The Individualistic Type. In this conception the 
State is regarded as a necessary evil. This type of State 
differs from the foregoing in little except in degree, but 
this difference must be noted. 

According to those who advocate this type, men as 
we find them are more or less imperfect and evil, and 
hence many of their wayward desires and unsocial im- 
pulses must be curbed and repressed by governmental 
power. Because of the fraud and violence of men a 



86 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

State which shall control the unruly and ill-disposed be- 
comes necessary. Thus Herbert Spencer shows that 
through co-operation into which men have gradually 
risen, benefits have been secured to them which could 
not be secured in their primitive state ; and that as an in- 
dispensable means to this co-operation political organiza- 
tion has been and is advantageous " (Spencer, " Princi- 
ples of Sociology," Sec. 442). But as society develops, 
as men become more moral and religion is diffused, the 
importance of the State will diminish till ultimately it 
will reach the vanishing-point. This view, it may be said, 
shades off on the one side into anarchism, and on the 
other into later ideas of State action. 

This view has had many advocates in ancient and in 
modern times, and strangely enough the Christian thinker 
and the most thoroughgoing agnostic are often found in 
the same school. In view of the weakness and imperfec- 
tion of men some form of State protection is necessary, 
otherwise the strong and vicious will aggress upon the 
weak and humble. But it is held that the State's use of 
force while necessary in the present, is itself an evil, and 
is opposed to the loving and merciful spirit of Christianity, 
The Christian theologians who hold this view are many 
and influential. Thus Channing says : " In heaven noth- 
ing like what we call government on earth can exist, for 
government here is founded in human weakness and 
guilt. The voice of command is never heard among the 
spirits of the just. Even on earth the most perfect 
government is that of a family, where parents employ 
no tone but that of affectionate counsel, where filial 
affection reads its duty in the mild look, and finds its law 
and motive in its own pure impulse " (" Works," p. 361). 
In other writings he takes a somewhat higher view of 
the functions of government ; but none the less he regards 
it as a questionable good and a necessary evil. It is 



THE IDEAL OF THE STATE %^ 

maintained by those who hold this conception that Chris- 
tianity aims to make good individuals, and when this end 
is secured the State becomes wholly unnecessary. It is a 
temporary expedient for meeting a temporary need, and 
it will disappear as the kingdom of God comes. 

It is rather significant that the Christian theologians 
who maintain this view should be supported in their con- 
tention by the most thoroughgoing agnostics. Conspicu- 
ous among these may be named John Stuart Mill and 
Herbert Spencer. The former represents the transition 
from the extreme doctrines of individualism to the more 
social conception of man. But none the less he throws 
great emphasis upon the individualistic idea and looks 
with suspicion upon the State. With him liberty has a 
negative sense and consists in '' being left^ to one's self.^^ 
" All restraint qua restraint is an evil " (" On Liberty, 
Chap. V). The great exponent of this view is Herbert 
Spencer who, from first to last, has been a defender of 
the individualistic conception of man. In his "Social 
Statics " he says : " Have we not shown that government 
is essentially immoral ? . . Does it not exist because crime 
exists, and must government not cease when crime ceases, 
for very lack of objects on which to perform its func- 
tions? " And again he says, " It is a mistake to consider 
that government must last forever. . . It is not essential, 
but incidental. As amongst Bushmen we find a State 
antecedent to government, so may there be one in which 
it shall have become extinct." In his " Principles of 
Sociology " he shows that some temporary benefits accrue 
from State action, but after all it is an open question 
whether the disadvantages do not ofifset the benefits. He 
shows further that while the political organization facili- 
tates co-operation, " yet the organization formed impedes 
further growth . . ." (" Principles of Sociology," Vol. II, 
sec. 447). In " Man versus the State " we have an elabo- 



88 



THE CHRISTIAN STATE 



rate attempt to defend the individualistic conception of 
man by exposing the sins of legislators and the coming 
slavery. 

The same conceptions are set forth also by other 
writers no less eminent. Thus Professor Freeman says : 
" As for discussions about an ideal form of government, 
they are simply idle. The ideal form of government is 
no government at all. The existence of government in 
any shape is a sign of man's imperfection" (''Hist. 
Essays," Fourth Series, p. 353). " The State ought to 
render itself useless," says M. Jules Simon, ''and to 
prepare for its own decease." 

It may be conceded that these criticisms are salutary 
and should be taken to heart by rash statesmen who hope 
to hale in the millennium by governmental statutes. It 
may be admitted also that governments have been guilty 
of many usurpations, and have committed many colossal 
blunders. But it is an open question whether the worst 
evils of bad governments are not immeasurably better 
than the inevitable evils of no government at all. It may 
be granted that the State makes many mistakes, and is 
often guilty of oppression and wrong, and that in a way 
its administration stands in the way of man's higher 
progress. But this neither proves that the State in itself 
is an evil, nor that it will disappear in the course of 
time. 

There are two serious objections to this individualistic 
view of the State. First, some form of government is found 
among every people that has made even the beginnings of 
progress. And it is also found that there is a direct 
relation between the general condition of the society and 
the amount of State action. " The history of progress 
is the record of a gradual diminution of waste. . . When 
we come to human society, the State is the chief instru- 
ment by which waste is prevented. The mere struggle for 



THE IDEAL OF THE STATE 89 

existence between individuals means unchecked waste. 
The State, by its action can, in many cases, consciously 
and deliberately diminish this fearful loss ; in many cases 
by freeing the individual from the necessity of a perpetual 
struggle for the mere conditions of life, it can set free 
individuality and so make culture possible. An ideal 
State would be one in which there was no waste at all 
of the lives and intellects and souls of individual men and 
women" (Ritchie, *' Prin. of State Interference," p. 50). 
For another reason this conception of the State is de- 
fective, as it rests upon a wrong reading of the facts of 
life. By nature man is a social being, and some form of 
social organization is natural to him. By nature also 
man is a poHtical being, and hence some form of political 
organization is necessary to him. Government would 
have been necessary had man not sinned; the State is 
needed for the sake of the good as well as for protection 
from the bad. They wrong the State who call it an evil, 
though they may qualify it with the adjective necessary. 
" Without civil society," says Burke, " man could not by 
any possibility arrive at the perfection of which his 
nature is capable, nor even make a remote and faint 
approach to it" ("Reflect, on Revolution in France"). 
The atomic and individualistic conception of mankind be- 
longs to a phase of thought that is doomed to pass away. 
Humanity is a great whole in which the person is but 
a member, and as in the human body each member is for 
all and all are for each, so also in human society. The 
social and political State thus grows out of the very 
constitution of man, and is the medium through which 
the social consciousness finds expression and the social 
welfare is promoted. " There is no such thing as prog- 
ress, or culture in the isolated individual, but only in 
the group, in society, in the ethnos. Only by taking and 
giving, borrowing and lending, can life either improve or 



90 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

continue" (Brinton, "Basis of Social Relations," XV). 

III. The Socialistic Type. It is not too much to say 
that the remarkable growth of socialism is the most sig- 
nificant sign of the times. In Germany and Russia, in 
Britain and America, the new doctrines are making their 
way. In these lands efforts have been made by various 
parties and from many sides to discount these doctrines 
and to stay their onrush, but thus far all such efforts 
have proved utterly vain. 

At this stage of its development, as might be expected, 
men look upon this new movement with very different 
feelings. Some persons find in socialism a new Messiah 
and anticipate through it the regeneration of the world. 
Many others stand in doubt, seeing some good in it, and 
yet sadly torn by conflicting emotions. They are greatly 
moved by the socialistic indictment of modern civilization 
and cannot deny its main counts; they feel the wrongs 
of the world which socialism dissects with such a merci- 
less hand; but withal they cannot accept the socialistic 
programme, and fear that they must wait for another 
Messiah. Not a few both fear and. hate socialism and 
see in it nothing less than the antichrist of Scriptures 
and the plague of human kind. Both from the side of 
the Church and the State men fear socialism and see in 
it the great menace of our times. From the side of the 
church men view its spread with alarm. Nor is this 
wholly groundless, for socialism, as preached by some of 
its apostles, scorns the church and discounts all religion. 
The leaders of socialism, many of them at least, are 
avowed enemies of the church, and they do not hesitate 
to speak their words of scorn. From the side of society 
also men fear socialism and see in it the beginning of a 
new slavery; they cannot accept its programmes, and 
they see in it a leveling down of the race to the status of 
its lowest members. 



THE IDEAL OF THE STATE 9^ 

Now, whatever one may think of sociaUsm matters 
Uttle • but it is a force that must be reckoned with m the 
days 'to come. The fact is, sociaUsm is something far 
deeper than a mere surface discontent ; it is somethmg 
more than the dreaming of a lot of wild visionaries ; it 
contains both an indictment and a programme, and these 
should be considered ; it may not be necessary to accept 
the programme, but it is folly to ignore the indictment. 
Modern society, as the most careful and conservative 
students declare, presents some features which may well 
awaken fear and cause despair. Some years ago Pro- 
fessor Huxley declared that if there is no hope of a large 
improvement of the condition of the human family, " I 
should hail the advent of some kindly comet which should 
sweep the whole affair away, as a desirable consum- 
mation." . . 
What then shall we do in such a time as this? It is 
certain that socialism cannot be met and answered by 
misrepresentation and denunciation. It is no less certain 
that it cannot be met by putting on blinders and refusing 
to see the things that are wrong and unjust in mod- 
ern society. Fearful churchmen and timid statesmen may 
try to ignore socialism or they may combine to oppose it. 
They may pass stringent laws against the socialistic 
propaganda, and may seek to stay its force by a subtle 
persecution. But in spite of it all, nay, rather, in a certain 
sense because of it all, socialistic doctrines will grow 
among the people, and socialistic programmes will obtain 
a larger following. 

But what then is socialism? This term socialism is 
one not easily defined, for the reason that there are all 
shades and degrees of socialistic thought, from the more 
extreme materialistic socialism of Labriola and Marx, to 
the moderate Christian socialism of Maurice and Rausch- 
enbusch. Not only so, but the socialistic programme 



9^ THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

shades off into the most pronounced communism on the 
one hand, or into the mild doctrines of the Fabian Society 
on the other. And once more, among the advocates of 
sociaHsm are found men who approximate the doctrines 
of anarchism on the one hand, and others who beheve in 
the widest extension of State action, though it may be an 
exaggeration to say that sociahsm is a very Proteus, 
possessing almost as many aspects as exponents (Lilly, 
"First Principles in Politics," p. 124). The author 
named agrees with Professor Luigi Cossa in his com- 
plaint that '* classification has a hard road to travel when 
it enters the tangle of jarring socialistic sects." It is not 
easy to find any one definition that is comprehensive 
enough to cover the whole doctrine in all its varying 
views. There are, however, certain constant factors, and 
these constitute the essential elements. 

In a general way it may be said that socialism repre- 
sents a state of mind and a definite programme. In the 
first sense it describes a tendency and an aspiration; it 
includes the views and efforts of those who seek to bring 
about a gradual betterment in human conditions. Thus 
a noted advocate of this view (Proudhon) when asked 
by the magistrate, ''What then is socialism?" repHed: 
'' Every aspiration after the betterment of mankind." " In 
that case," said the magistrate, "we are all socialists." 
" That is what I have always maintained." To this cate- 
gory belongs the definition of Roscher, who says that it 
includes " those tendencies which demand a greater re- 
gard for the common weal than consists with human 
nature." The avowed aim of the Christian socialists of 
England, according to their organ, " The Christian So- 
cialist," is " to diffuse the principles of co-operation by 
the practical application of Christianity to the purposes 
of trade and industry." The great thinkers in economics 
and politics have all been socialists in this general sense. 



THE IDEAL OF THE STATE 93 

The term socialism, in the latter sense, however, has a 
much more definite and restricted meaning, and this is 
quite explicit. " The general tendency is to regard as 
socialistic any interference with property undertaken by 
society on behalf of the poor, the limitation of the prin- 
ciple of laissez faire in favor of the suffering classes, 
radical social reform which disturbs the present system 
of private property as regulated by free competition" 
(Kirkup, "Encyc. Brit.," Vol. XXII, p. 205). In the 
midst of the varying theories that go by the name of so- 
cialism there is a kernel of principle that is all essential. 
That principle is of an economic nature, and is most 
clear and precise. To avoid the evils of the unrestricted 
concentration of capital in a few hands, with the subjec- 
tion of the great mass of workers; to prevent the eco- 
nomic anarchy that results, with the degradation of the 
working-man and his family; to secure a more just and 
equitable distribution of the means and appliances of hap- 
piness, socialists propose that land and capital, which are 
the requisites of labor and the sources of all wealth and 
culture, should become the property of society, and be 
managed by it for the general good (Kirkup, ibid., p. 
206). The word thus connotes "an industrial society, 
which in the main features is sufficiently clear and precise. 
It is not a theory which embraces all departments of social 
activity, but is confined to the economic department, deal- 
ing with others simply as connected with this and in- 
fluenced by it" (Ely, "Socialism and Social Reform," 
p. 8). "The totality of these industrial relations con- 
stitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis 
upon which the legal and political superstructure is built, 
and to which the definite forms of social consciousness 
correspond" (Labriola, "Materialistic Conception of 
History," p. 49). 

Two distinctive characteristics we find in the socialistic 



94 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

conception. In the socialist teaching the State is supreme, 
and the person exists for the sake of society. In the reahn 
of trade and industry this control is absolute, and the 
person has little or no initiative. Here individual initia- 
tive is reduced to the minimum and State action is raised 
to the maximum. In the socialistic programme the chief 
emphasis is thrown upon economic and industrial inter- 
ests, and these are the chief concern of the State. " The 
essence of the theory consists in this associated produc- 
tion with a collective capital with the view to its equitable 
distribution. In the words of Schaeffle, ' the Alpha and 
Omega is the transformation of private capitals into 
a united collective capital'" (Kirkup, '' Encyc. Brit.," 
Vol. XXII, p. 206). The basis of society, socialists 
maintain, is economic, and involves a fundamental change 
in the process of production and distribution. 

However, while the leading exponents of socialism ad- 
mit this, they yet maintain that all the other interests of 
life will be conserved. " All the other theories so often 
connected with it and so important in relation to religion, 
philosophy, marriage, patriotism, etc., are with regard 
to socialism non-essential. At the same time it will be 
seen that an economic change, such as that contemplated 
in socialism, would most powerfully affect every other 
department of human life" (Kirkup, ibid., p. 220). 
Socialism, in its more logical forms, insists that the 
State is a necessary good. It is necessary and is destined 
to play a much larger part in the drama of social develop- 
ment and human progress. It is good and is destined 
more and more to fulfil its beneficent functions. In this 
respect this type of society is in harmony with the last 
type, the fraternal, though it differs widely from that type 
in certain essential respects. 

This term socialism is a comparatively modern one, 
but the idea connoted by the term is undoubtedly ancient. 



THE IDEAL OF THE STATE 95 

In a brilliant lecture Bernard Bosanquet has shown that 
socialistic features " in the way of a very positive relation, 
not a merely protective relation, between the life of the 
private citizen and the action of the public authority, 
were for good or for evil essential to ancient commu- 
nities." In all of the Greek cities, many socialistic elements 
,were to be found, and the claim is made that these were 
largely responsible for the wonderful progress that was 
achieved ("Essays and Addresses," chap. iii). This 
type of society has many illustrations among the nations, 
though of course it has not always borne its modern name. 
The empire of Russia and the repubHc of France, much 
as they differ in detail, belong to this type of society. In 
the United States also many socialistic features are to be 
found, as in the protective tariff and the postal system. 
In all of these instances we have a maximum of State 
control and a minimum of individual initiative, and this is 
characteristic of the type. The State is practically every- 
thing, and the individual has value just so far as he serves 

the State. 

Now, it may be said that the most thoughtful stu- 
dents of social affairs are ready to confess that the so- 
cialistic indictment of modern economic life in its main 
counts is essentially just. They also concede that certain 
elements of the socialistic programme must find illustra- 
tion in future social changes. Whatever may be its de- 
fects or its advantages, it is inspired by a great and wide 
human sympathy that makes it most acceptable to the 
modern man. And however materialistic may be its aims 
and programmes, it does insist that every man shall have 
a true inheritance in society and the gains that have 
come to humanity. This ideal has played a large part in 
the drama of the world's history thus far, and it promises 
to play a leading role in the near future. As a protest 
against the errors and excesses of the individualistic 



9^ THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

type of society it is worthy of all honor. As an effort to 
solve some of the problems of production and distribu- 
tion it is engaging the attention of an ever-increasing 
number of students. It is probable that whatever may 
be the form of society in the near future, it will more and 
more approximate the socialistic type. Schaeffle comes 
to the conclusion that "The future belongs to purified 
socialism"; and in this conclusion we may heartily, 
concur. 

But the socialistic ideal fails in several important 
respects. For one thing, it does not sufficiently honor 
the personalities of men, and it makes light of individual 
initiative. In whatever form it has appeared there is 
something arbitrary and mechanical about it. The social- 
istic State is only possible where opposites are denied and 
extremes are suppressed, and where a certain mechanical 
and artificial uniformity is maintained. Socialism is a 
doctrines of averages; and men are human beings, not 
merely units in an average or atoms in a compound. So- 
cialism means a social levelling and that a levelling down ; 
and the opportunity for untrammeled individual develop- 
ment is the best product of any civilization (Andrews, 
"Wealth and Moral law," p. 94). The type of society 
that we seek, the only type that humanity can finally 
accept, must recognize the distinctions and extremes, and 
must then unite them in some vital and harmonious whole. 

In another respect the socialistic type fails, in that it 
does not give us a high and human and spiritual concep- 
tion of man and of society. In this conception man is 
regarded chiefly as an economic being, whose industrial 
wants are the basic facts of his life. Marx and Rod- 
bertus, Loria and Labriola, all throw the chief emphasis 
upon the economic aspects of life. The whole conception 
of life and society, of welfare and progress, is material- 
istic; and all other interests and relations of man and 



THE IDEAL OF THE STATE 97 

society are construed in terms of material well-being. 
This conception, as Mazzini pointed out with such acute- 
ness and force, " mutilates man by taking from him both 
head and heart, and reduces him to a purely physical and 
fleshly being" ("Thoughts on Democracy in Europe," 
V). It is evident that the State in this conception is not 
the whole people organized in a co-operative capacity in 
the interests of the whole man. It is evident rather that 
it is the machinery of the State employed in behalf of 
certain economic and material interests to the complete 
exclusion of all the higher interests of society. 

IV. The Fraternal Type. Before we enter upon a 
consideration of this type of society it may be permis- 
sible to say a word about another that has played a 
large part in the drama of social development and is 
now sometimes confused with the fraternal type. The 
paternal State, as it may be called, has had many repre- 
sentatives among the nations, and strenuous efforts are 
made even now to establish it in some lands. In 
this type of society the State is a kind of parent or 
guardian, whose business it is to govern men, to think 
for them, and to prescribe their mode of living. It is 
maintained that the great majority of the people are un- 
able to govern themselves, and so this must be done for 
them. It is maintained also that the majority are incom- 
petent to solve the problems of thought, and so the State, 
through its auxiliary, the church, must do their thinking 
for them. This type of society was the prevalent one in 
all the great empires of the past— Egypt and Persia, 
China and Peru. It was the prevailing type in Europe 
for many centuries, in France and Russia, in Italy and 
Spain. The Jesuits attempted to found it among the 
Indians of Paraguay, but with results that were sadly 
disappointing. It is this type that seems to be the domi- 
nant one in the mind of the Emperor of Germany at the 



G 



98 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

present time. This type seems to be the ideal in the minds 
of such acute thinkers as Carlyle and Ruskin, who be- 
lieve in the wisdom of the few but have scant patience 
with the mistakes of the many. The idea of an infallible 
church is implied in this conception, a church that shall 
be all-dominant, that shall have power to enforce its 
decrees and compel men to keep in the straight and nar- 
row way. We are told there are tendencies at work 
in society that are creating this type, and in the coming 
age there will be established a benevolent feudalism in 
the foremost nations of the world. 

We here notice briefly the fraternal type of the State, 
while later we shall discuss its essential elements more in 
detail. In this type we find that mankind is conceived 
of as a great unity and fellowship. Persons therein are 
brothers who regard each others' interests and co- 
operate for the common welfare. This bond of brother- 
hood wrought into the very nature of man and not 
dependent upon any social contract or human volition, is 
the ground and guarantee of liberty and equality. In 
this type the State is a social solidarity with a corporate 
existence; it is a moral person with a corporate will that 
is formulated in constitutions and laws ; it is a social 
brotherhood in which each person has a place, and for 
whose welfare the State is concerned. In this type the 
government rests upon the consent of the governed; it 
represents the opinions and the interests of all the 
citizens, and it is the medium of the mutual sacrifices and 
services of all the people. The whole being of man is 
taken into account ; in a word, we have a confession of 
brotherhood in all the relations of human life. 

The individualistic type of State recognizes the ele- 
ments and extremes of humanity, but it has no middle 
term to combine and harmonize them. The socialistic 
type denies and excludes the extremes, and in denying 



THE IDEAL OF THE STATE 99 

them it denies the distinctions of human kind, and 
copies only the unity of the middle. The fraternal type 
recognizes the distinctions and extremes of mankind, 
and it provides a unifying principle which combines them 
all into a vital and harmonious whole. This type em- 
bodies all that is good and vital in the paternal type in 
that it teaches those that are strong to bear the in- 
firmities of the weak, and those who possess much to 
hold their resources in trust for the common good. In 
a word, the fraternal type of society — which is the 
Christian type — is the one type that satisfies the demands 
of reason and conscience and provides a stable and ade- 
quate basis for social and political States. 

Attempts have been made from time to time to realize 
this ideal, but thus far all such attempts have been on a 
small scale, and have been short lived. In the early 
Jerusalem church there was a partial and transient reali- 
zation of this ideal : " And all that believed were together 
and had all things in common ; and they sold their pos- 
sessions and goods and parted them to all according as 
any man had need (Acts 2 : 44). The Franciscans and 
Quakers each in turn sought to realize the fraternal type 
of society. The Covenanters of Scotland cherished the 
vision of a consecrated land of saints ruled by a cove- 
nanted king loyal to Christ, and pledged to seek the inter- 
ests of all the people. The Puritans, in their day, hoped 
the time might speedily come when England might become 
a land of saints, " a pattern of holiness to the world, 
and the unmatchable paradise of the earth." Though 
all of these particular efforts failed in their immediate 
object, yet the ideal itself has lived, and through all the 
years it has gained strength and significance. And it still 
lives to inspire the prophetic soul of the world and to be 
the architectonic principle of the Christian State that is 
to be. 



V 

THE FORMS OF THE STATE 

IN our study thus far we have found that while the 
State is natural and necessary to man, the State itself 
becomes explicit in and through a process of develop- 
ment, and that the form which the State assumes depends 
upon many conditioning factors. 

The process carried forward in the world, so far as 
we can read it, is the building up of a society that shall 
realize the thought of God. The life of God is seeking 
to get itself reborn into the life of humanity, and men are 
called to organize life according to this divine purpose. 
Thus the State, which is implicit in the will of God, takes 
shape slowly, being hastened or retarded by the will of 
man and the forces of society. It is possible to view this 
process of universal history from within or from without, 
from above or below. Thus we may say human history 
is the progressive disclosure of the purpose of God in 
human affairs; or we may say that human progress is 
the conscious realization of that purpose on the part of 
man. Thus we find, however, that these two factors meet 
and blend in the creation of the social and political 

State. 

From the beginning of political thought various efforts 
have been made to frame a classification of States. 
Those who are interested in this may consult such writers 
as Aristotle and Bluntschli, Rousseau and Willoughby, 
Guizot and Lieber. However, many of these classifica- 
tions are more or less arbitrary and artificial; they are 
external and formal, and do not sufficiently consider the 

lOO 



THE FORMS OF THE STATE lOI 

Spirit which Hes back of the form. Thus, some would 
classify States according to the degree of governmental 
action — that is, into despotic and free governments, with 
their variations. Others again would classify them ac- 
cording to the various powers exercised; that is, legal, 
paternal, and socialistic. Still others would view them 
historically; that is, as ancient, classical, medieval, and 
modern. And still others would divide them according 
to the possession or non-possession of some selected 
feature ; that is, whether they possess a written or an un- 
written constitution, whether the sovereign is hereditary 
or elective, and whether the executive power is in the 
hands of one or many. There is, however, as it seems to 
me, a method of classification that embodies all that is 
good in all of these systems, and yet deals with the ele- 
ments that are most distinctive. The classification which 
we shall adopt is one that is based upon the diffusion of 
political consciousness with the active participation of 
the people in the affairs of government. Under four 
forms it is possible to classify practically every State 
that has yet appeared in the world. These four classes 
of States, the theocratic, the monarchical, the aristocratic, 
and the democratic, are the great historical forms, and 
they are all deserving of careful study. 

This classification in its main details is a very ancient 
one, and takes us back to the very beginnings of political 
thought. Thus in Herodotus, the father of history, we 
find three of these forms described with tolerable ac- 
curacy, and their merits appraised with remarkable judg- 
ment ("Herodotus," Bk. HI, Sec. 82, 83). A century 
later Aristotle practically adopts the same classification, 
only with a difference. Tn his treatise we have four 
forms of government — monarchy, aristocracy, polity, 
or free State, and democracy, as the corrupt form of 
polity. Another form is suggested at a later time by 



102 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Josephus, that is theocracy, which is used to describe the 
Jewish State (" Contra Apion," Bk. II, Sec. 17). These 
classifications have stood the test, and form the categories 
of our thought to-day. 

I. Theocracy. It is fitting that Josephus, who probably 
coined the word, should be allowed to define its meaning. 
By theocracy he means a government whose authority 
and power are with God, whose will is the sole law of the 
nation. This law covers the whole range of life, and 
leaves nothing of the very smallest consequence to the 
pleasure of the person himself. It is made known to men 
through legislators and priests who serve as representa- 
tives of Jehovah, and consequently never think of speak- 
ing on their own authority. 

It has often been pointed out that theocracy, as a form 
of the State, belongs to the early stages of the human race. 
In every land where it is possible to trace the primitive 
State we find that this form of government has pre- 
vailed. In most cases the gods were regarded as the 
parents of the people, and hence their authority was 
supreme. In the most real sense they were honored as 
the creator of the tribe, or people, and the people hence 
placed themselves under their protection and govern- 
ment. Among all ancient peoples this same fact is seen, 
though of course, with wide variations and modifications 
(De Coulanges, "The Ancient City," passim). 

Perhaps the most notable illustration of this form of 
the State is to be found in the history of the people of 
Israel. In this history we have the conception of Jehovah 
as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and as the 
God and King of the people themselves. He it is who 
called Abram from Ur of the Chaldees, and gave him 
the promise of an inheritance in the new land. He it is 
who led the fathers out of the bondage of Egypt and 
established^ them in the land of Canaan. He it is who 



THE FORMS OF THE STATE IO3 

raised up Moses to be a deliverer and lawgiver, speaking 
through him and giving the people the Two Tables of the 
Law. He it is also who, when the people were troubled 
and enslaved by neighboring peoples, raised up a deliverer 
and wrought great wonders, thus proving himself to be 
their King. "The whole soil of the Promised Land 
is the property of Jehovah, and the various families only 
held it as tenants. In recognition of the divine ownership 
a tenth of the produce of the land and flocks had to be 
given to the tabernacle for the maintenance of the priests " 
Bluntschli, Bk. VI, chap. vi). In common with all Sem- 
ites there were three things which the IsraeHtes asked 
of their God, and believed themselves to receive— help 
against their enemies ; counsel by oracles or soothsayers 
in matters of national difficulty; and a sentence of judg- 
ment when a case was too hard for human decision 
(W. Robertson Smith, '' The Religion of the Semites," p. 

64). 

It is easy to see how, under such circumstances, a 

priesthood should arise which should stand between God 
and the people. Because of their relation to God on the 
one hand and the people on the other, they were sacro- 
sanct beings, and their words carried irresistible weight. 
Thus it came about that the priesthood in nearly every 
ancient nation was practically supreme, making and un- 
making rulers and laws, and dominating thought and 
life in the minutest details. It is easy, also, to see how, 
under such circumstances, a kingship should flourish, 
basing its claims to human loyalty and submission upon 
its alleged relations to the God of the nation. An appeal 
to history will show that theocratic governments have 
usually been the most autocratic and despotic tyrannies ; 
they have been the upholders of caste and slavery, and 
they have cast a malign spell over thought and life. For 
this reason theocracy, as a form of government, has not 



I04 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

been highly regarded by students of political science, 
and one must confess that this suspicion is not without 
cause. 

There is one aspect of this form of government that 
we may notice as germane to our purpose. In a theo- 
cratic State the government is wholly external and formal. 
It is something that comes down upon men rather than 
something that rises through men; hence there is little 
or no political self-consciousness on the part of the people ; 
no man feels any responsibility for the affairs of State. 
The ruler is regarded as a supernatural being who is 
raised above men by nature, and they have but one duty 
in life — to know and do his will. 

II. Monarchy. This is probably the most widely 
recognized form of the State. But it is not easy to frame 
a satisfactory definition for the reason that a pure form 
is seldom found. Historically it has shaded off into 
theocracy on the one hand and into aristocracy on the 
other. A monarchy is the term usually employed to de- 
scribe a government in which the sovereign power is in 
the hands of one man, but as a matter of fact there are 
States termed monarchical in which the nominal head — 
as in England — possesses only a semblance of supreme 
power. Thus also the term is used to describe an auto- 
cratic and irresponsible despotism, as in the old empires 
of Peru and China; and it is likewise applied to the 
constitutional and limited monarchy of Germany and 
Japan. Those who are interested in the study of these 
varying forms of monarchy may find an informing dis- 
cussion in " The Theory of the State," by Bluntschli, 
and " Introduction to Political Science," by Seeley. 

In a broad sense monarchy describes a form of govern-, 
ment in which sovereignty resides in one person. This 
person may not always be sovereign in the sense that all 
political power is in his hands,, but he represents sover- 



THE FORMS OF THE STATE IO5 

eignty in a special sense, and the decrees of government 
are always issued in his name. This is so in such a 
constitutional and democratic government as Great 
Britain, where it is called '' The Majesty's government "; 
and it is true of such an autocratic monarchy as Russia, 
where the czar claims the final sovereignty. In an auto- 
cratic government the one person is supreme, and the 
authority of a subordinate is delegated and conferred 
authority. In many of the great empires of the past this 
form of government prevailed, and we find autocracy 
raised to the nth power. In the modern world, however, 
there are few States of this class, since a new spirit is 
abroad working mighty changes. Thus Russia is some- 
times denominated an autocratic State with one man as 
the supreme and sole authority. But even in Russia 
there is no such thing as pure monarchy, for the czar 
is dependent upon the officers of State, and practically 
at least Russia is a beaurocracy. Still less is Russia an 
absolute monarchy since the establishment of the third 
Duma, which has successfully exercised parliamentary 
rights. In addition, no czar, however strong or despotic, 
would dare to disregard too far the interests or traverse 
too rudely the wills of the silent millions. Russia may be 
described as an autocratic monarchy limited by the pa- 
tience and loyalty of her people. 

In other States the monarchical form of government is 
found in varying degrees. There is what is called limited 
and constitutional monarchy, where the dignity and power 
of the monarch are limited and regulated by constitutions 
either written or unwritten. In Great Britain we have 
a constitutional monarchy without any written constitu- 
tion beyond certain charters and declarations ; but none 
the less there are certain recognized conventions that arc 
binding upon all, sovereign and people alike. We have 
here also a Parliament composed of two houses, one 



I06 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

hereditary or appointive — the House of Lords and Bish- 
ops; and the other the House of Commons, chosen by 
the direct vote of the people. In the case of disagree- 
ment between these two houses the House of Commons 
may appeal to the people, and if by their votes they sus- 
tain it the House of Lords and even the king himself 
would yield. The king names the prime minister, who 
selects his own cabinet, and so long as Parliament ac- 
cepts the policy of the cabinet, all goes well ; but in case 
Parliament refuses to accept this policy and " to uphold 
the government," that moment the prime minister resigns 
and another is named by the king, whose policy is more 
in accord with the will of the people. Parliament is really 
supreme and can make and unmake cabinets; it can ac- 
cept or reject the royal counsels; in fact, it can dethrone 
kings and determine succession. As a matter of fact, 
while the throne of England is a hereditary monarchy, 
the sovereign has not so much real authority as the 
President of the United States. 

HL Aristocracy. This is a government of the few and 
by the best. "The ideal principle of aristocracy is the 
rule of the nobler elements of the nation over the sub- 
ordinate masses. The way in which these nobler ele- 
ments are estimated and exalted varies in different States " 
(Bluntschli, "The Theory of the State, Bk. VI, chap, 
xvii). In some instances these so-called nobler ele- 
ments have based their prerogatives upon the possession 
of effective power, the masses of the people being held in 
subjection. In some cases these prerogatives are based 
upon the ownership of the land, and here a few hold 
the lives and fortunes of the great mass and use them at 
their own pleasure. In some cases these prerogatives 
are based upon nobility of blood and birth. 

Aristocracy, as the name implies, is a government by 
the best, but aristocracy, as it has appeared in history, 



THE FORMS OF THE STATE IO7, 

has not always merited this high title. Aristotle, in his 
day, described the perversion of aristocracy, which he 
calls the rule of the few, the rich, the strong, the self- 
assertive, and not the rule of the wisest, the noblest, the 
best. All forms of government are liable to abuse and 
perversion, but this form is especially prone to degener- 
ation. An aristocracy, however constituted, easily and 
quickly becomes jealous of its dignities and prerogatives. 
Aristocracies have usually glorified the past, and thus 
have always resisted change. They seek to preserve the 
eternal order and resent the aspirations of the people as 
an infringement of their special privileges. In every State 
in which an aristocratic element is found — and it is found 
in every State in some form or other — this element is 
always the defender of things as they are, and always the 
opposer of things as the people think they ought to be. 
Thus, from one cause and another, it has come about that 
men have become very suspicious of either aristocracy 
or oligarchy, and as a result no pure example of this 
form of the State has survived later than the middle of 
the nineteenth century. 

As a matter of fact, however, the aristocratic element 
holds a large place in all modern progressive States. As 
human society becofries more complex the problems of 
government becom^i more difficult; and the various de- 
partments must be manned by experts. Not every man 
can fill the office of attorney general, or secretary of 
State; picked men are required for these offices, and for 
many others. As a matter of fact, even in the most 
democratic government, large powers must be delegated 
to special men, the true aristoi in the nation. No govern- 
ment. In its executive and judicial departments at least, 
can be run by a debating society ; In all of these positions, 
and In many others, the best results will come from 
trained and qualified men. This has been recognized by 



I08 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

all the keenest minds of the ages; and it is emphasized 
in later times by such men as Carlyle and Mazzini and 
Ruskin and Emerson. These men, it may be said, had 
no use for kings and sham aristocrats, but they were 
clear-sighted enough to see that the many were unpre- 
pared for the higher offices of State. 

There are many in the world to-day who assert that 
the governments of the world are becoming increas- 
ingly oligarchic; that is, they are falling under the in- 
fluence and sway of the rich and strong. That this 
is not wholly without basis we shall see in a later chapter ; 
but that the world will long tolerate any such government 
all history disproves. The whole tendency of the day is 
from class government and not toward it. 

IV. Democracy. This form of the State has been 
known for twenty-five centuries at least, and at first 
sight seems very easy to define. The attempt, however, 
proves it by no means so simple a matter. The term 
democracy is an old one, being known to Herodotus, and 
everything indicates that it was a common term. There 
were so-called democracies in ancient Greece, but these 
older conceptions differed widely from our modern ideas. 
Not only so, but in some of the most democratic countries 
in the world, as in Switzerland and the United States, 
there are such restrictions and limitations that in some 
aspects these governments may be described as aristocra- 
cies in both form and spirit. In Switzerland the privi- 
leges of citizenship are limited to certain classes of men, 
and in the United States women are not regarded as full 
citizens. In Switzerland there is a limitation of the 
franchise, and in the United States the government is 
strictly representative. Thus, even in the most modern 
and democratic States we find certain aristocratic ele- 
ments. And thus all forms of government shade off into 
others by imperceptible degrees. The government of 



THE FORMS OF THE STATE lOQ 

every State in the civilized world possesses some 
elements of other forms. 

There is another thing that should be noted in the use 
of this term democracy. Aristotle, who gives us the first 
full and formal classification of States, does not give 
democracy a very honorable place. He regards it as 
the perverted and degenerate form of poHty, which he 
defines as a government where the citizens at large direct 
their policy to the pubHc good (" Politics," Bk. Ill, chap, 
vii). With him monarchy, aristocracy, and polity are the 
three true forms of the State, while despotism, oligarchy, 
and democracy are the perversions of these. The polity 
of Aristotle was a constitutional State under the control 
of the free citizens, who met in ecclesia to discuss and 
frame measures for the public good. But in these States, 
as he saw them, it happened often that some popular 
orator and unprincipled demagogue in an adroit and 
sophistic address appealed to and carried the crowd with 
him against the better judgment of the more thought- 
ful citizens. Then the democracy, the common people, 
overstepped the bounds of polity or public good, and sup- 
ported only such measures as appealed to individual 
interests and the passing whim. In consequence of this 
inevitable tendency in democracy, Xenophon declares that 
in his native city the lot of the wicked and foolish was 
better than that of the wise and good. 

In later times the term democracy stands for every 
form of popular government. In the foremost demo- 
cratic States, written constitutions have been adopted, 
in many respects conforming to the polity of Aristotle. 
From one cause and another the term has been cleared 
of some of its unsavory associations, and has become the 
accepted title of that form of government in which the 
sovereign power resides in the mass of the people. 
Perhaps the most familiar and characteristic definition is 



no THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

that of President Lincoln, in his Gettysburg address, 
" government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people." 

There is one aspect of this general question that is 
germane to our purpose here, and this may be noted. 
The man who believes in the rationality of the universe 
believes that there is some great purpose that is being 
wrought out in the processes of history. This purpose is 
nothing less than the coming of God's kingdom in the 
earth and the building up among men of the City of 
God. Through the ages man has painfully and slowly 
apprehended the purpose that is being wrought out in 
the world, and hence he has imperfectly and haltingly 
learned the art of self-direction and conscious co-opera- 
tion. But with it all, through all the generations, man 
has slowly and surely come to self-consciousness and has 
progressively learned the art of self-government. As 
this self-consciousness grows it manifests itself in vari- 
ous ways, and by the nature of the case it creates around 
itself various forms for its expression and use. In a 
large sense it may be said that the historic forms in which 
the State has appeared among men are the revelations and 
realizations of this poHtical self-consciousness of the 
people. 

In view of this, the various forms of the State con- 
sidered have a vital significance and a world meaning. 
In a theocracy there is little or no political self-conscious- 
ness on the part of the rank and file of the people, and 
consequently no man is held responsible for the affairs of 
State. In a monarchy, where one man is supreme, the 
average man has no conception of personal freedom, as 
he has little political self-consciousness. In an aristocracy 
a few men are free, but the great mass of the people 
think of themselves as subjects, and not as sovereigns, 
and so have little sense of political obligation. In a 



THE FORMS OF THE STATE III 

democracy or free State, the people think of themselves 
as sovereign, are becoming more or less conscious of 
political ties, and begin to feel the obligation to co- 
operate consciously for the common weal. The form of 
government is the expression of the political self-con- 
sciousness of the people, and the growth of this political 
consciousness is revealed and measured in the institutions 
of society and the enactments of government. It can 
readily be seen that the democratic or free State belongs 
to the advanced stages of human freedom and develop- 
ment, that it is only possible where men are conscious 
of the political ties that bind them together, and are 
learning to co-operate and sacrifice for the common weal. 

It is just here that we perceive the difference between 
democracy and the other forms of the State. Why have 
men, in Western lands at least, learned to call the govern- 
ment of one man a tyranny and the government of all 
men a blessing? This is why: In the one case the gov- 
ernment is something arbitrary and external, something 
imposed upon the people from without ; in the other case 
it is personal and voluntary, the freely chosen limitation 
of the people themselves, by themselves, for the sake of 
the common good. And this gives us the very essence of 
the democratic conception, and with this we are here 
content. 

There are two things which every student of political 
affairs needs to keep in mind, whatever may be the form 
of the State in which men live. The first is this : that in 
every State, whatever may be its form of government, 
there are certain tasks and problems that are practically 
the same. " Understand then, once for all, that no form 
of government, provided it be a government at all is, as 
such, to be either condemned or praised, or contested for 
in anywise, but by fools. But all forms of government 
are good just so far as they attain this one vital neces- 



112 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

sity of policy — that the wise and kind, few or many, shall 
govern the unwise and unkind; and they are evil so far 
as they miss of this, or reverse it " (Ruskin, " Munera 
Pulveris," Sec. 125). 

The other fact is this : that the form of the government 
is the expression of the political life and consciousness of 
the people, and is probably that form for which the 
people at that stage are best adapted. At any rate it is 
manifest that the higher and later forms are ill adapted to 
men in a lower stage of civilization, with a faint social 
consciousness, and with little experience in self-govern- 
ment and political co-operation. As in nature, so in so- 
ciety; as the life of the tree rises from the ground and 
pushes out toward the branches, the tree itself changes 
and grows to adapt itself to the new conditions and to 
conserve the new life; so in society, as the social con- 
sciousness unfolds and men learn the divine art of living 
together, new forms of society are created and new po- 
litical institutions are framed as the expression and 
realization of the new life within. 



Book 11. Democracy 



H 



The idea of legally establishing inalienable, inherent, and 
sacred rights of the individual is not of political but religious 
origin. What has been held to be a work of the Revolution was, 
in reality, a work of the Reformation and its struggles. Its 
first apostle was not Lafayette, but Roger Williams who, driven 
by a powerful and deep religious enthusiasm, went into the 
wilderness in order to found a government of religious liberty, 
and his name is uttered by Americans even to-day with deepest 
respect. ^jelUnek, Rights of Man and of Citizens, p. 77. 

The idea of democracy is not, if we look below the surface, 
so much a form of government as a confession of human brother- 
hood. It is the equal recognition of mutual obligations. It is 
the confession of common duties, common aims, common respon- 
sibilities. True democracy — and in this lies its abiding strength — 
substitutes duties for rights. This substitution changes the center 
of gravity of our whole social system, and brings the promise of 
stable peace. 
— Brooke Foss Westcott, The Incarnation and Common Life, 

P' 349- 

When wilt thou save the people? 

O God of mercy, when? 
The people, Lord ! The people ! 

Not thrones and crowns, but men. 
God save the people ; thine they are ; 

Thy children, as thy angels fair, 
Save them from bondage and despair. 

God save the people! 

— From Ehenezer Elliott. 

It is therefore in the highest degree illogical to argue that 
the State can never extend its powers. It is the organ of social 
consciousness, and must ever seek to obey the will of society. 
Whatever society demands it must and always will endeavor to 
supply. If it fails at first it will continue to try until success at 
last crowns its efforts. If it is ignorant it will educate itself, if 
in no other way by the method of trial and effort. 
— Lester F. Ward, Psychic Factors of Civilization, pp. 302, 303. 

This Bible is for the government of the people, by the people, 
and for the people. 

— Introduction to Wycliffe's Bible, 1384. 



VI 

THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY 

THE Story of democracy is one of the most fascinating 
that has ever been told. In a large sense it repre- 
sents the long struggle of the human spirit to emancipate 
itself and to become its own master. In a true sense also 
it defines the purpose that is being wrought out in human 
society and the process by which it is being realized. 

The term democracy is an old one, as old at least as 
the time of Herodotus. And the familiar use of the term 
by the historian proves that it had behind it a consider- 
able antiquity. It is sometimes said, however, that de- 
mocracy is a Christian product, and that democracy as 
a fact is the child of the Reformation. And it is quite 
possible, indeed, that this contention can be sustained. 
There is here no contradiction, for the more carefully 
we study the rise and development of the democratic 
movement, the more clearly we see that there has been 
a preparation for the event itself, and this preparation 
created the atmosphere in which the new movement 
grew. 

There are several lines of investigation that may be 
followed by any one who would discover the beginnings 
of democracy. Thus, he may go through history and note 
where democratic institutions have appeared and seek to 
correlate these and show their relation to our modern 
institutions. Again, he may go through the nations and 
observe the transfer and transit of power and sovereignty 
from the one to the few, and from the few to the many, 
noting also the causes and results of these outward po- 

115 



Il6 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

lltical changes. In this way he may gain a very clear 
idea of the democratic movement, and may note the many 
racial contributions toward the one great end. And once 
more, he may study the process whereby the Umitations 
and restrictions that are upon men, whether political, 
religious, or social, are removed and they become full 
free citizens in the State. And last of all, he may follow 
the progress of mankind, going behind the actual forms 
and institutions of the hour and watching the self- 
consciousness of man as it grows and unfolds, and be- 
comes at last the modern social and political consciousness 
of the foremost peoples. It is possible that the one who 
would discover the true causes and beginnings of democ- 
racy must follow all of these lines, and must then combine 
their results. The most important factor for our purpose 
is the last, and we are here concerned primarily with 
that growing self-consciousness which has produced such 
great changes in society and has made democracy in- 
evitable. 

I. The Foregleams of Democracy. Herodotus records 
a discussion of three Persians concerning the relative 
merits of the various kinds of government. While this 
discussion may be the historian's own invention, it yet 
indicates that the idea was a somewhat familiar one. A 
century later Aristotle devotes a large part of his work 
on " Politics " to a consideration of this form of govern- 
ment, and many things indicate that there were many 
democratic States in his age. The great days of Grecian 
life, the times when hope was young and genius flourished, 
were the days in which democracy was more or less 
regnant. It is possible to go to the history of several of 
these Greek States and find a very close relation be- 
tween the democratic spirit and the productions of human 
genius. In his '' History of European Morals," Lecky 
considers what he calls one of the anomalies of historv 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY II7 

" that within the narrow Umits and scanty population of 
the Greek States should have arisen men who, in almost 
every conceivable form of genius in philosophy, in epic, 
dramatic, and lyric poetry, in written and spoken elo- 
quence, in statesmanship, in sculpture, in painting, and 
probably also in music, should have attained almost or 
altogether the highest limits of human perfection (" His- 
tory of European Morals," Vol. I, p. 418). And from his 
studies in hereditary genius Galton concluded that '' the 
ablest race of which history bears record is unquestionably 
the ancient Greeks, partly because their masterpieces in 
the principal departments of intellectual activity are still 
unsurpassed, and partly because the population which 
gave birth to the creators of these masterpieces was very 
small" ("Hereditary Genius," p. 329). And be it re- 
membered that these Greek States at the hour of their 
greatest greatness were democratic, in the ancient sense 
of the term at least. 

But while the term democracy is an old one, we find 
that democracy in the modern sense of the term was 
wholly unknown in the ancient world. Thus Thirlwall 
says : " The term democracy is used by Aristotle some- 
times in a larger sense, so as to include several forms of 
government, which, notwithstanding their common char- 
acter, were distinguished from each other by peculiar 
features; at other times in a narrower, to denote a form 
essentially vicious, which stands in the same relation to 
the happy temperament to which he gave the name polity, 
as oligarchy to aristocracy, or tyranny to royalty " 
("Historian's History of the World," Vol. HI, p. 179). 
A study of ancient records will show that no philosopher 
or statesman in ancient Greece ever conceived of the 
sovereignty of the people universal and imprescriptible, 
but one and all based citizenship in the State upon the 
possession of certain privileges and prerogatives. This 



Il8 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

must be said, however, that these Grecian experiments, 
voicing as they did a splendid aspiration after Hfe and 
Hberty, remained to fructify the thought of man and to 
produce great results in far-off ages. 

The contribution of Rome to the democratic movement 
is comparatively small, and at best is indirect. It is true 
that the early life of Rome v^as more or less democratic, 
and there were times when this form of government 
seemed about to be established. This is certain, that in 
the history of Rome we have repeated illustrations of 
the transit of power from the one to the few and from 
the few to the many. Thus, in the early days of the 
republic, we find that the commons are made an order 
in the State and have judges of their own (" Historian's 
History of the World," Vol. V, p. 113). For many gen- 
erations the plebs complained of the patricians, and at 
last they revolted against them and gained formal recog- 
nition in the State. In the fifth century B. C. the pa- 
tricians and the Senate yielded, and a new compact was 
devised which gave the plebeians official representatives 
and made them an independent body (" Historian's His- 
tory," ibid., p. 126). Once more, there was a great move- 
ment in behalf of popular government in the time of the 
Gracchi, a movement, be it said, that did much to pro- 
mote democracy, and that gave birth to some noble ap- 
peals from the people. In the time of Sulla the last ves- 
tige of democracy disappeared, never more to show itself 
in Rome till the mighty empire had crumbled into ruins. 
Thus the history of the Roman republic is the progres- 
sive decline of the people from a monarchy through a 
modified democracy, ending at last in an absolute des- 
potism. 

One of the most significant contributions to this move- 
ment is made by the Germanic peoples, especially those 
occupying the portions of the Continent known as Fries- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY 119 

land and the Rhine land. JuHus C^sar gives a few vivid 
descriptions of these peoples, but the graphic pages of 
Tacitus bring them before us with remarkable distinct- 
ness. To rebuke the vices of his own age and people it 
is possible that the historian has added some high colors 
to the picture, but none the less the picture is a significant 
one. Motley's summary is followed in its main details. 
The German system, he says, while nominally regal, was 
in reality democratic; for with the Germans the sover- 
eignty resided in the great assembly of the people. There 
were slaves, indeed, but in small numbers, consisting 
either of prisoners of war, or of those unfortunates who 
had gambled away their liberty in games of chance. 
Their chieftains, although called by the Romans kings, 
were in reality generals, chosen by universal suffrage. 
The same assembly elected the village magistrates and 
decided upon all important matters of war and peace. All 
State affairs were in the hands of this fierce democracy. 
Any authority that the chieftains possessed was a dele- 
gated authority, and it was an authority to persuade 
rather than to command (Motley, "The Rise of the 
Dutch Republic," Vol. I, Sec. 2, 5). Thus John Fiske is 
partially justified in the statement that American history 
does not begin with the Declaration of Independence or 
even with the settlement of Jamestown and Plymouth; 
but it descends in unbroken continuity from the days 
when stout Arminius, in the forests of northern Germany, 
successfully defied the might of imperial Rome (Fiske, 
" American Political Ideas," p. 7). It is true that many 
of these traits were lost to a degree at least, and in course 
of time monarchical rule obtained among the various 
Germanic peoples. But the transfer of these democratic 
ideas to England in the early times where there was soil 
for them to grow in and produce results in far-off times is 
here in point. 



120 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

It is in England, therefore, that we find those ideas 
at work which are prophetic of coming changes ; and it is 
in England that we find soil congenial for democratic 
ideas, at least in the early stages of their growth, for it 
was in England that we witness what has been fittingly 
called " The Coming up of the Serfs " (Hosmer, " Hist, of 
Anglo-Saxon Freedom"). It was in England that we 
find a transit of power from the one to the few, and from 
the few to the many. And every step of this double 
process can be clearly traced in the form of charters and 
constitutions which admitted the people to a share in 
government and guaranteed them certain privileges be- 
fore the law. The constitutional history of England is 
an important chapter in the progress of democratic gov- 
ernment. The history of the English Parliament epito- 
mizes the history of England from the primitive German 
Assembly to the modern House of Commons. From 
the earliest times we find that there was some form of 
representative government. And '' never was the govern- 
ment concentrated in the hands of the king alone ; under 
the name of the Wittenagemot, of the Council or the 
Assembly of the Barons, and after the reign of Henry 
III of the Parliament, a more or less numerous and 
influential assembly composed in a particular manner, was 
always associated with the sovereign" (Guizot, *' Rep. 
Gov.," Par. II, Lee. i). There were times when this 
assembly was somewhat subservient to despotism, but 
withal it had a voice in the government and represented 
the mass of the people. When men are able to think 
and when they are free to speak, some form of govern- 
ment is only a question of time. The Great Charter 
which the barons wrested from King John contained 
some provisions which had wide application, and which 
produced far-reaching results. "The rights which the 
barons claimed for themselves they claimed for the 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY 121 

nation at large." This charter, reaffirmed at various 
times and interpreted anew in each generation, illustrates 
the transit of power from the few to the many, and 
marks the consciousness that is growing in the minds of 
the people. 

There was one other factor that had some influence 
upon the movement, and in a real way prepared the minds 
of men for the new ideas. This factor was the various 
guilds and associations of all sorts that sprang up in 
Europe all through the Middle Ages. These guilds were 
of various kinds, religious and social, though many of 
them seem to have been craft guilds in the strict sense of 
the term. In early Roman times such guilds were known, 
and Plutarch enumerates nine functions that they per- 
formed r Encyc. Brit.," " Guilds "). Throughout Europe 
during all the Middle Ages these guilds flourished, and 
they did much to develop in men a consciousness of kind 
and to eflface certain artificial distinctions. The great 
body of the citizens, in many places, were enrolled in these 
guilds, and as their position and wealth improved they 
sought to wrest the control of the town's resources from 
the patricians; thus the common people gained a new 
sense of humanity, and thus they made their voice heard 
in the affairs of government (Bax, "German Society of 
the Middle Ages," pp. ii, 210). Through membership in 
these guilds men ceased to be mere specimens of the hu- 
man race, and became instead authorized constituents of 
human society. Thus Lotze is justified in the conclusion 
that " the guild marks an undoubted advance of the 
human race" (*' Microcosmus," Vol. II, p. 230). It is 
possible that, when the full story of democracy is told, the 
contribution of these guilds will not be an insignificant 
one. Perhaps the most fateful factors in the whole move- 
ment were the associations that were formed among the 
peasants, and which led to some important results. 



122 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Then came the Renaissance, in some respects one 
of the most splendid and prophetic movements of the 
Christian centuries. For two hundred years and more, 
now here, now there, we find many stirrings of the hu- 
man mind, many indications that man is about to awake 
to a new Hfe. About the middle of the fifteenth century, 
following the fall of Constantinople, many men with a 
wonderful literature, wandered through western Europe 
to sell their wares and to become teachers of the nations. 
The words of the great masters of old, those words that 
burn and throb with a passion for liberty and light, found 
prepared minds everywhere and produced marvelous 
results. The Renaissance was in a sense a revival of 
learning, but it was much more than this. It gave men 
new thoughts ; it stirred their minds and filled them with 
questionings ; it awoke in them new aspirations and 
turned their attention to wrongs that had too long been 
neglected. The latter half of the fifteenth century is one 
of the great creative epochs of the world's life, and there 
is hardly an age that can compare with it. This brings us 
to the beginning of the sixteenth century with the world 
prepared for some great new movements. While we 
nowhere find democracy in any sense of the word, we 
yet find that the world is prepared for its appearance, 
and channels are grooved in which the new streams may 
run. 

II. The Rise of Modern Democracy. At various times 
and by various men efforts have been made to trace the 
beginnings of our modern democratic ideas, liberty, 
equality, and fraternity. It has been claimed by some that 
these great ideas have been created by skepticism and 
unbelief, and consequently that we must find their origin 
in such men as Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau and Paine. 
Discussion of this position is not needed, were there 
space. Such specialists as Borgeaud and Jellinek, Oscar 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY I23 

Straus and Professor Ritchie, all agree in this, " that the 
idea of legally establishing inalienable, inherent, and 
sacred rights of the individual is not of political, 
but of religious origin (Jellinek, " Rights of Man and 
of the Citizen," p. 77). The " Declaration of the Rights 
of Man and of the Citizen," by the French Assembly 
in 1789, it is sometimes supposed, is but the formulated 
exposition of the ideas of Rousseau and his school. | 
But Jellinek has shown most conclusively that the 
principles of the " Contrat Social " are at enmity with 
every declaration of rights, and consequently that we 
must look elsewhere, even to America, for the real sources 
of these declarations. For the high-sounding phrases of 
the French Declaration are " for the most part copied 
from the American Declaration or Bills of Rights," of 
Virginia and other States (Jellinek, chap. iii). And in 
America the ideas that find expression in these Decla- 
rations and Bills can be traced back in an unbroken Hne 
to the great ideas of the Reformation. In the truest 
sense of the term modern democracy is the product of 
the Reformation, and it cannot be understood apart from 
this great movement. 

The Reformation, viewed from every point of view, is 
one of the most remarkable movements of all the ages. 
In a real sense it was a movement by man and of man, a 
movement that has its causes definite and definable, a 
movement that can be described and followed from gen- 
eration to generation. And yet the Reformation in a no 
less real sense is a movement that cannot be fully ex- 
plained by any of the formulas and factors known to man, 
and must be regarded as one of the signal manifestations 
of God. D'Aubigne shows that the same movement was 
seen everywhere, and that many of these movements had 
no human connection and communication of any kind. 
*'It was not Germany that communicated the light of 



124 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

truth to Switzerland, Switzerland to France, and France 
to England; all these countries received it from God . . . 
One sole and same doctrine was suddenly established in 
the sixteenth century at the hearths and altars of the most 
distant and dissimilar nations; it was everywhere the 
same spirit, everywhere producing the same faith " 
("History of the Reformation," Bk. VIII, chap. i). 
This illustrates two things that for our purpose are all- 
important: an atmosphere has been created in which 
certain great, new ideas may grow; and certain great 
ideas sown in the minds of men are beginning to develop. 
There were many causes that contributed to the Refor- 
mation movement, but beyond question the all-determin- 
ing factor was the Christian Scriptures, which were found 
in the hands of men. To understand this movement, to 
know the real beginnings of democracy, we must know 
how it came about that the Scriptures were placed in the 
hands of the people. Since the time of Constantine the 
power of the Roman Catholic Church had grown by 
leaps and bounds until by the time of Boniface VIII it 
claimed dominion over all human affairs. During all this 
time the Church has diverged more and ever more widely 
from the apostolic form, until it lost nearly all of its 
original character. For one thing, the Church became 
more and more formal and institutional and gave less and 
less attention to Scriptural instruction and spiritual func- 
tions. Not only so, but tl.^. Church became allied with 
the civil powers and aided and abetted them in their 
tyrannous treatment of the people. It is not surprising, 
therefore, that various revolts against the corrupt doc- 
trines and oppressive measures of Church and State 
should appear with ever-growing frequency and ever- 
increasing boldness. It is significant, however, that nearly 
all of these revolts had their source and inspiration in the 
Scriptures which men insisted on reading. A splendid 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY I25 

roll of heroes are the leaders of these revolts, from Peter 
of Bruys and Arnold da Brescia, with Peter Waldo and 
John Hubs, to John Wyclifife and Jerome of Prague. 
Through the zeal of Peter Waldo, one of the morning 
stars of the new day, the Gospels were translated into the 
language of the common people, and the long-lost words 
of Holy Writ were studied with a wonderful activity. 
The people listened to Waldo and his teachers, and turned 
away from the Church in disgust and despair. The 
Church of Rome, through its alliance with the State, made 
a determined effort to exterminate this new movement, 
and the story of that persecution is one of the blackest 
pages of all history. So thoroughly was this work done, 
that Sismondi says : " Simon stamped out not only a 
people, but a literature." But though the fire was put out 
in the Canton of Vaud, yet many smoldering brands re- 
mained, and these were scattered all over central Europe. 
The forbidden Book made its silent way everywhere, and 
everywhere men were inspired by its truths to new ideas 
of religious and social life. 

In 1380 John Wycliffe finished his translation of the 
Scriptures, and then went to his quiet grave at Lutter- 
worth. But the fire that he had lighted blazed ever more 
and more brightly and aroused the fear of the papal 
authorities. Thirty years after his death his bones were 
dragged from the grave to be burned with the Bible that 
he had loved and had given to the people. Wycliffe's 
translation was known in Germany and was studied by 
many men who, in course of time, became reformers 
themselves. Then, about the middle of the fifteenth 
century, one of the most important inventions of the world 
was given to men, and the printing press was set to work 
multiplying copies of the Scriptures. It is prophetic of 
many things to come, that the first book — according to 
tradition — to issue from the press was the Bible itself. 



126 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

It was translated again and again, and all through Ger- 
many the people were reading the Scriptures in their 
own tongue. In course of time, in the very communities 
where the Waldenses had preached and the Taborites had 
suffered, a new body arose with the Scriptures in hand 
to continue and broaden the work of reform. In 15 18, 
about the time that Luther nailed his theses to the church 
door at Wittenberg, it is reckoned that there were four- 
teen complete translations of the Bible in High German 
and five in Low German in general circulation (Heath, 
" Anabaptism," p. 13). This fact explains in part, at 
least, how it happened that the new movement seemed to 
spring into life in a hundred places at once. 

There is one other factor in this Reformation movement 
that is all important for our study, and without this fac- 
tor before us the Reformation itself cannot be understood 
either in its sources or its consequences. The Refor- 
mation was not primarily theological, but social. For 
long years the peasants in all parts of Europe had felt 
the yoke of oppression grow heavier and heavier upon 
their necks. In course of time this yoke became simply 
unbearable, and here and there the people rose in revolt. 
" The people, bowed down by civil and ecclesiastical 
oppression, bound in many countries to the seignorial 
estates and transferred from hand to hand along with 
them, threatened to rise in fury and at last to break 
their chains. This agitation had shown itself long before 
the Reformation by many symptoms, and even then the 
religious element was blended with the political ; in the 
sixteenth century it was impossible to separate these two 
principles, so closely associated in the existence of nations. 
In Holland, at the close of the preceding century, the 
peasants had revolted, placing on their banners by way 
of arms, a loaf and a cheese, the two great blessings of 
the people" ("Historian's History," Vol. XIV, pp. 259, 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY 1 27 

260). In Alsace a general uprising took place, and 
burghers as well as peasants marched side by side under 
the sign of the Bundschuh, a peasant's shoe laced from 
the ankle to the knee with leathern thongs. This League 
of the Bundschuh appeared again and again in various 
parts of the Rhine country making everywhere the same 
demands. In many lands the governments rose against 
these disturbing elements, and everywhere these peasants' 
revolts were quenched in torrents of blood. But while 
the conflagration was suppressed, many brands were left 
smoldering and it was not long before a blaze was burning 
in a dozen different places. It had become very evident 
that a political and social revolution was needed no less 
than a religious and ecclesiastical reformation, and it was 
not strange that such a movement should begin. Thus 
all the various lines of preparation seem to converge in 
the early decades of the sixteenth century and the 
Reformation, so called, is the result. The Scriptures are 
in the hands of the people, and these are studied with a 
wonderful interest as being the very word of God to 
men. The great mass of the people are in protest against 
the corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church and are in 
revolt against the abuses of the civil power. The tinder is 
prepared, the spark is struck, and the Reformation 
follows. 

The men of that time, with the Scriptures in hand, and 
with such protests in their hearts, discover or re-discover 
certain great central Christian truths that were all-potent 
in their meaning. It is not easy for us of to-day to under- 
stand how these truths could have dropped so completely 
out of the current of Christian thought and life ; but the 
fact remains that for many centuries some of the central 
truths of Christianity were almost wholly unknown. It 
must be said, however, that there were little groups of 
inquirers and mystics here and there who cherished some 



128 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

of the vital truths of the gospel, and Luther himsell 
acknowledges his indebtedness to the little book '' Theo- 
logica Germanica," which saw the light about the begin- 
ning of the fourteenth century. But with it all the great 
truths of the Scriptures came to men almost as a new 
revelation from heaven. The Reformation, it has been 
said, was projected on two great lines and inspired by two 
great ideas, justification by faith, and the priesthood of| 
all believers. The doctrine of justification by faith gave 
man a new conception of his worth and made him see that 
he was called to the privilege of direct access to God. It 
was his privilege to stand upon his feet, with the light of 
heaven in his face, and to call himself the child of the 
Most High. The truth of the priesthood of believers 
abolished all the false distinctions that men had made, and 
emphasized the equality of all men in the kingdom. The 
words of the Apostle Peter : " Ye are a royal priesthood," 
with other texts of similar import, Luther called " thun- 
derbolts of God, against which neither all the Fathers, 
nor all the councils, though they were innumerable, nor 
all the world combined, shall be able to prevail." These 
great truths carried with them certain corollaries, and 
these, in a way, were hardly less important than the 
propositions themselves. 

It is true that these great truths of Christianity were 
seen from different angles and were expressed in various 
terms, but none the less, they were the determining ideas 
of the whole movement. In the hands of Luther these 
ideas were developed mainly in their theological bearings, 
and this was a work that needed to be done. He came 
to the conviction that the authority in man's life was 
within, and not without, the soul, and he held that " every 
faithful believer in Christ was superior to the pope, if 
he could show better proofs and grounds of his belief " 
(Kostlin, "Life of Luther," p. Ii6). He developed the 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCIL\CY I29 

doctrine of justification by faith and made it the corner- 
stone of a theological system that had great practical 
value in the world. In the hands of Calvin these ideas 
found expression in various theological and political 
forms which have had an extraordinary influence upon 
human thought. 

In all of these Christian ideas it appears that man is 
sacred, that he holds certain relations to God which are 
neither created nor affected by Church or State action, 
that there are certain rights and prerogatives that belong 
to him by nature, that these rights he must claim and this 
nature he must fulfil, and that whatever institutions may 
exist, whether ecclesiastical or civil, must recognize these 
rights, and must rest upon them. These ideas may have 
been religious in their origin, but by their very nature 
they must be political in their application. In the great 
truths of Scripture men found not only religious truth and 
spiritual food, but social and political ideals that deter- 
mined the whole structure of their ecclesiastical and social 
life. These great ideas, falling upon the prepared hearts 
of men in the sixteenth century, were received with won- 
derful avidity, and were affirmed with a new power. 
Given such ideas in religion, and democracy in the State 
is only a matter of time and application. It is not long 
before we find men beginning to apply these ideas in 
various directions and to claim rights which were revo- 
lutionary. It is not long before we find a group of people, 
mainly peasants, dubbed by their enemies Anabaptists, 
who are cherishing these Christian ideas and are begin- 
ning to put them into practice. In 1524 the peasants of 
Germany issued a manifesto in Twelve Articles which, in 
a way, voiced the new spirit, and are prophetic of great 
things to come. These articles, it is now pretty definitely 
settled, were written by Balthasar Hiibmaier ; at any rate 
he confessed under torture at Vienna, in 1528, that he 
I 



130 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

had revised and commented on these articles which were 
sent to him for that purpose (Vedder, " Hubmaier," p. 
96). These Twelve Articles are to be ranked among the 
great documents of the ages, and they are worthy of 
careful study. There is not a trace of fanaticism in them, 
and they are in accord with the best modern reUgious and 
democratic principles. Thus : 

Article i. Every commune has the right to choose its own 

pastor, who ought to teach the true faith without human additions. 

Article 2. For his maintenance let there be a tithe on corn, 

but none on cattle. , u , j • 

Article 3. Every man being redeemed by Christ s blood is a 

Freeman. We are therefore free and will be free. But this is 

no reason we should refuse to obey magistrates. 

Article 5. Woods and forests taken possession of by any 

means except fair purchase must be returned to their original 

owner, the commune. 
Article 9. Justice must be impartially administered. 

In the earUer years of his career, from 1517 to 1523, 
Luther gave expression to many noble sentiments in favor 
of religious liberty. " No one can command or ought 
to command the soul, except God, who alone can show it 
the way to heaven. It is futile to compel any man's be- 
lief. Heresy is a spiritual thing which no iron can hew 
down, no fire burn, no water drown" (Luther's Tract, 
Von WeUichcn Obrigheit). These new ideas, thrown out 
among the people with great boldness and force, naturally 
produced a great commotion, and it is not strange per- 
haps that many men should be carried off their feet. 

Among the peasants these ideas spread like wildfire, 
and by these people they were given a much wider appli- 
cation than Luther himself had intended. Thus we find 
that the words of the Reformer, harsh and defiant as they 
had been a-ainst the usurpations of the Roman Church, 
are taken up by the people and turned against their po- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY I3I 

litical oppressors. It was not the religious movement 
that gave birth to the pohtical agitations; but in many 
places it was carried away by their impetuous waves. 
Perhaps we should even go farther and acknowledge that 
the movement communicated to the people by the Refor- 
mation gave fresh strength to the discontent fermenting 
in the nation. The violence of Luther's writings, the in- 
trepidity of his actions and language, the harsh truths 
he spoke, not only to the pope and prelates, but also to 
the princes themselves, must all have contributed to in- 
flame minds that were already in a state of excitement. 
Accordingly, Erasmus did not fail to tell him : '' We are 
now reaping the fruits that you have sown." At this time 
the reform in religion was received with joy, both by 
princes and by people, and had the principles of the 
Reformation been limited to the sphere of religion alone, 
little difficulty might have arisen. But in this time the 
reformation in political and social matters was confined 
almost wholly to the peasants, and so had against it the 
most powerful part of the nation. In all parts of the land, 
movements of one kind and another sprang up and 
aligned men in different parties. Could all of these move- 
ments have had a leadership as wise as the one under 
Hiibmaier and Denck in Swabia and Alsace, the story of 
the times might have had a different ending. But un- 
fortunately there were other movements, as at Miinster 
under Miinzer and Pfeiffer, that awakened the fears of 
men and caused the whole movement to be discredited. In 
this time Luther's feelings underwent a terrible conflict. 
Should he side with the people and apply the principles of 
the gospel to political wrongs? But to do that would be 
to lose the support of the princes. Would not the whole 
movement fail if he should forfeit the favor of the civil 
powers? And yet the cause of the people was the cause of 
God, and there were great wrongs in social life. 



132 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

The Reformer's voice that had been so potent in its 
protest against spiritual tyranny was suddenly hushed on 
the appearance of the Anabaptists. He was shocked at 
some of the excesses he saw, and was fearful lest they 
should check the progress of the gospel. To him these 
Anabaptists threatened disorder and anarchy, and he be- 
lieved that the whole cause of truth was in danger. Then 
he hesitated no longer, but welcomed the strong arm of^ 
the civil power in seeking their suppression. He in- 
veighed against the insurgents with all the energy of his 
being, and worse than all he roused the princes to draw 
the sword against the common people. One wing of this 
movement did run to excesses at Miinster and elsewhere ; 
but the other groups of peasants were moderate and Chris- 
tian in their demands, and one of these was the move- 
ment under Hiibmaier and Denck whose pronouncement 
we have noticed. They all did protest, however, against 
the wrongs endured both from Church and State; they 
all did ask that their rights be respected and their liber- 
ties assured; they did affirm that democracy in religion 
meant democracy in State, and in a way they sought to 
make their belief effective. One can readily see that 
such ideas were wholly unacceptable to the leaders in 
Church and State, and it is not strange that they should 
unite against the people. 

The Reformation, as we have seen, was general and not 
local, and in England many of its most characteristic 
results were achieved. The Reformation, we have also 
seen, was no less political than religious, and in England 
both of these struggles went on side by side. " Episco- 
pacy was abolished by the Presbyterians; monarchy by 
the Independents " (Borgeaud, " Rise of Modern Democ- 
racy," p. 28). Knox and Melville, the leaders of the 
Presbyterians, brought from Geneva the system of Calvin, 
which they endeavored to establish in Scotland; and 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY 1 33 

Presbyterianism is Calvinism tempered by the aristo- 
cratic tendencies of Calvin (Borgeaud, ibid., p. 31). The 
Presbyterians did much to break the power of Catholi- 
cism and Episcopacy, but they never became democrats in 
any sense of the term. '' The Independents or Congrega- 
tionaiists, were Puritans, but Puritans of an essentially 
English type, and they went much farther along the road 
toward democracy than the Presbyterians. They accepted 
Calvinism as a system of doctrine, but rejected it as a 
system of church organization. Independency, or as it 
was first called, Congregationalism, is Calvinism without 
Calvin" (Borgeaud, ibid., pp. 30, 31). 

In course of time this independent movement divari- 
cated, one branch fighting for liberty in England, and the 
other seeking its fortunes in the new world. At home 
Cromwell felt the need of men whom he could trust in 
his armies, and the Independents appealed to him by the 
enthusiasm of their religion and the purity of their lives. 
By degrees the army became the stronghold of indepen- 
dency and the independent party was able to control 
Parliament. Then, in 1648, these English democrats pro- 
claimed their principles in a manifesto presented to 
Parliament for adoption. This document, entitled " An 
Agreement of the People of England," lays down prin- 
ciples fully democratic in nature ; it recognizes the sov- 
ereignty of the people and the toleration of all forms of 
Christianity ; it asks for the suppression of State inter- 
ference in church government, and provides for a Consti- 
tution for the State in which the fundamental laws were 
embodied and defined (Borgeaud, " Rise of Mod. Dem.," 
p. 39). This document was in reality a constitutional 
charter, and provided for a purely democratic government 
in the best sense of the term. But for some reason not 
fully known this document was never put into execution 
(Borgeaud, ibid., chap. ii). Once more a petition was 



134 



THE CHRISTIAN STATE 



presented to Parliament, January 20, 1649, in the name of 
the army, by the general-in-chief and his council of 
officers. But other matters engaged the attention of 
Parliament— the trial of the king— and action on the 
Agreement was put off for a more convenient season. 
This more convenient season never came, for soon the 
democratic party fell, and Cromwell became sole dictator. 
Thus the principles of democracy never came to full fruit- 
age in England (Jellinek, "Rights of Man and of the 
Citizen," pp. 62, 63). 

At the beginning of the seventeenth century a number 
of Independents had left England and had taken refuge 
in Holland. In course of time they formed the bold 
project of leaving the Old World and crossing the sea 
where they might find refuge and freedom. Finally, a 
little company, one hundred and two souls in all, on Sep- 
tember 6, 1620, set sail from Delft Haven and turned their 
faces toward the setting sun. Their pastor, John Robin- 
son, gave them some good advice which, alas, they too 
soon forgot. When nearing the shores of the New World 
they drew up and signed a document that must be ranked 
among the great papers of the human race. The historian 
Bancroft grows eloquent over this paper and says: 
" This was the birth of popular constitutional liberty. . . 
In the cabin of the Mayflower humanity recovered its 
rights and instituted government on the basis of equal 
laws enacted by all for the general good" (" History of 
the United States," Vol. I, p. 207). This is partially true, 
but it is not by any means all of the truth. For, no 
sooner were these men landed and settled than they re- 
fused to accept the full meaning of their agreement and to 
accord to all men an equal share in the government. Other 
colonies were founded in due time by the Puritans in 
Massachusetts Bay, but in none did democracy become 
an actual experience. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY I35 

This brings us face to face with the one man to whom 
the modern world owes the full development of the demo- 
cratic idea. Roger Williams must forever rank as one 
of the great epoch-makers of the world, and to him im- 
partial historians accord the honor of being the first 
democrat. It was not until his expulsion from Salem 
Colony that he became a Baptist, but the evidence is in- 
disputable that he had long been a Baptist at heart. He 
had spent much time among the Baptists of England and 
was familiar with their doctrines and writings. No 
sooner had Williams set foot in America than he found 
himself in conflict with the authorities, both civil and re- 
ligious. He found a strange thing existing : " It was not 
a union of Church and State," says Straus, " for that 
signifies some equality at least of authority ; but it was a 
Church dominating the State and using it as an instru- 
ment to carry out its will. The consequence was that 
every civil question had its religious bearing, and every 
religious question its civil bearing, but in all questions the 
religious aspect preponderated" (Straus, "Roger Will- 
iams," p. 20). The principle of soul liberty had taken pos- 
session of Williams' very being, and he was not willing 
to have his conscience ruled by any magistrate. He could 
not believe that a man's citizenship in the State should be 
determined by his subscription to a church creed, and as 
he was a man who could not entertain such convictions in 
silence he soon fell under the suspicion of the theocratic 
authorities. After four years of discussion and trouble 
Williams was banished from the colony by the peremptory 
orders of the General Court as a disturber of the peace. 
In course of time he settled in what was afterward known 
as Rhode Island, in a place which, out of gratitude to 
God, he named Providence. Williams finally went back 
to England, and having the powerful aid of Sir Henry 
Vane, he secured a charter in which democracy is first 



136 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

made a corner-stone. Among the provisions of the cov- 
enant based upon this charter are the following : 

And now sith our charter gives us powre to governe ourselves 
and such others as come among us, and by such forme of civill 
government as by the voluntary consente, shall be found most 
suitable to our estate and condition, 

It is agreed, by this present Assembly thus incorporate, and 
by this present act declared, that the forme of government 
established in Providence Plantations is Democraticall ; that is 
to say a Government, held by the free and voluntary consent of 
all, or the greater part of the free inhabitants (Borgeaud, 
"Rise of Modern Democracy," pp. 160, 161). 

'' It became his glory to found a State upon that 
principle, and to stamp himself upon its rising institu- 
tions, in characters so deep that the impress has remained 
to the present day, and can never be erased without the 
total destruction of the work. . . He was the first man 
in modern Christendom to establish civil government on 
the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of 
opinions before the law, and in its defense he was the 
harbinger of Milton, the precursor and the superior of 
Jeremy Taylor. . . Let then the name of Roger Williams 
be preserved in universal history as one who advanced 
moral and political science, and made himself a bene- 
factor of his race " (Bancroft, '' History of U. S., Vol. I, 

chap. xv). 

HI. Democracy at Last Appears. From what has been 
said it is evident that modern democracy is the child of 
the Reformation. It is also evident that various streams 
began to flow in many places at once, all moving in the 
one general direction. The main stream of this new 
movement we may trace from its rise among the Ana- 
baptists of Germany, through the Netherlands to Eng- 
land, and from England to the Providence Plantations. 
This brinp-s us to the middle of the seventeenth century 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY I37 

with the democratic idea finding recognition in the Rhode 
Island Colony. 

The colony of Rhode Island was destined to have a 
marked influence upon the other colonies; and yet it 
must be confessed that for a time this influence is not 
easily traced. From the founding of the colony, for a 
hundred years and more, the course of democracy seems 
to have made little progress in America, and the Provi- 
dence Plantation stands almost alone in its democratic 
ideals. That the soil of the colonies, however, was being 
prepared for the democratic ideal is plain even to the most 
cursory observer. The colonists who came to America 
were in the main religious and civil refugees, men too 
progressive to be satisfied with conditions in the home 
country, and men too much in love with liberty to bow 
the servile knee at the command of king or prelate. 
Here, in the New World, the people were obliged to begin 
at the beginning and lay foundations for a new political 
order. The settlers were in the main farmers living far 
apart, with each man the architect of his own fate and 
fortune, compelled by the exigencies of the case to de- 
pend largely upon his own initiative and judgment. These 
settlers were accustomed to unite for mutual defense 
against the Indians, but for the ordinary purposes of 
life each man was sufficient unto himself, being in a 
large sense his own ruler and priest. These colonists 
were in the main men with strong religious convictions, 
dissenters and come-outers of one kind and another, men 
who loved truth and were very sure of God, believing in 
the accountabihty of each man to God, and cherishing 
the highest estimate of the sacredness of each man's 
personality. Such ideas cherished by such men living in 
such conditions, must perforce produce extraordinary 
and far-reaching results. 

In the various colonies, each with its own type of re- 



138 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

ligion and life, we find that the government is approxi- 
mately democratic in spirit if not in form. In Maryland 
and Pennsylvania, in Virginia and New York, the govern- 
ment is practically democratic and the people are being 
trained in the art of self-government. From the found- 
ing of the Providence Plantations to the Declaration of 
Independence the cause of democracy seems to make 
little progress; and there is not much that can be told. 
But in reality the great democratic ideas are working 
themselves deep into the very life of the people, and men 
are slowly coming to political self-consciousness. How 
soon or how far these ideas would have produced their 
full results, without some opposition that forced them into 
the foreground, we cannot say; for human progress is 
achieved through action and reaction of opposing forces, 
and human ideas are shaped and defined in the furnace 
of antagonism and struggle. But at any rate the arbi- 
trary action of the British crown furnished this very 
element of antagonism and forced men to take their stand 
and define their ideas. In 1776 Virginia adopted a 
Declaration of Rights, which must be regarded as one of 
the epoch-making papers of the world, in some respects 
outranking Magna Charta and the Mayflower Compact. 
This Declaration of Rights, made by the representatives 
of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and 
free convention, defined and asserted certain rights, 
which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, 
as the basis and foundation of government. In this 
remarkable declaration it is affirmed that all men are 
by nature equal, free, and independent, and have cer- 
tain inherent rights of which, when they enter into a 
state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or 
divest their posterity ; all power is vested in, and conse- 
quently derived from the people; that magistrates are 
their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY I39 

them; that government is, or ought to be, instituted for 
the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, 
nation, or community; that no man, or set of men, are 
entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privi- 
leges from the community, but in consideration of public 
services, which not being descendible, neither ought the 
office of magistrate, legislator, or judge to be hereditary. 
This declaration was adopted June twelfth, thus ante-| 
dating by nearly a month the Declaration of Independence 
signed in Philadelphia by representatives of all the 
colonies. 

It required eight years of struggle and sacrifice for 
the colonies to make good their faith, but they fought 
on and fought out the war to its successful conclusion at 
Yorktown. Some years later delegates from all the 
States met at Philadelphia to consider the present condi- 
tion of the colonies and to take measures for their future 
security. In the debates of this Convention one sees that 
all kinds of ideas are struggling for expression and su- 
premacy, but with it all a constitution is framed which 
Gladstone has declared is the most remarkable docu- 
ment ever produced by the mind of man in a given time. 
In this constitution certain great principles of democracy 
are affirmed and are made the fundamental law of the 
land. But this constitution, remarkable as it was, many 
men felt was defective at some points ; more than one 
patriot denounced it for its monarchical squint ; and many 
Baptists protested that it did not safeguard their rights 
and privileges. This latter defect was remedied by the 
adoption of the first amendment, and with this article 
modern democracy may be said to have made a beginning. 

But one other factor remains to be noticed before the 
story is fully told. In the Declaration of Rights of 
Virginia, as well as in the Declaration of Independence of 
the Colonies, there are many high-sounding phrases about 



I40 



THE CHRISTIAN STATE 



the rights of men and the freedom of all by nature; 
but the fact remains that these phrases must be taken 
with a qualification. In the constitution also are many 
provisions guaranteeing the rights of men and providing 
for the privilege of the franchise; but these provisions 
also must be taken with some limitations. For it appears 
that neither the Declaration of Independence nor the 
Constitution of the United States, applied to the man with 
a black skin. It may be said that some of the men who 
framed these documents did not regard the black man 
as a brother ; and it must be said also that some of the 
men who signed these documents saw how illogical was 
their course on this question. But the problem remained 
to vex the nation and finally to become the occasion of 
the most bloody war of all the ages. Then, as the result 
of this war, through the arbitrament of the sword, the 
new right is defined and the black man is recognized as a 
human being. The last word of this story of the begin- 
nings of democracy is written in the new amendment 
which is now adopted, Article XV : " The right of citi- 
zens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or 
abridged by the United States or by any State, on account 
of race, color, or previous condition of serv^itude.'* 

Summing up, we find several things that may be noted. 
Thus we find that democracy, in the modern sense of the 
term, as a principle, and not merely as a privilege, is a 
comparatively recent thing, and can be traced back to its 
beginnings in the Reformation of religion in the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries. That is, while democracy may 
have been more or less a fact here and there in the past, 
yet democracy as a principle belongs wholly to later times. 
There were so-called democracies in the old world, but 
democracy based upon simple manhood and growing out 
of the recognition of the imprescriptible rights of men 
cannot be traced back beyond the Reformation. Again, 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY I4I 

it is in the great truths of Christianity that we must find 
the real fountain-head of the new streams that are flow- 
ing through the world. Many of the ideas of the gospel 
as preached by the reformers were developed and applied 
by irreligious thinkers and skeptical writers, but the fact 
is writ large upon the page of history that the real fathers 
of democracy were pronounced Christian men (Fairbairn, 
"Religion in History and Modern Life, pp. 224, 225). 
And the other fact to be noted is this : that the progress 
of democracy can be read in the growing recognition of 
the worth of man and the removal of restrictions of one 
kind and another. One by one these limitations have 
been swept away — limitations of class, of religion, of 
condition and color; and thus government of the people, 
by the people, and for the people has begun to appear. 



VII 

THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY 

IN these latter times one of the most fateful movements 
of all the ages is gaining direction and momentum. 
The rank and file of the people are more and more deny- 
ing the divine right of kings, not only to govern well or 
ill, but to govern at all, and they are claiming that all just 
governments rest upon the consent of the governed. In 
view of this, it is well that we know something of the 
forces and factors that give power and direction to this 
movement. For by knowing the things that make for 
democracy we may know something of the trend of this 
movement, and may learn something of its prospects. 

The past four centuries have witnessed a great and sig- 
nificant change in social and civil affairs, the transit and 
transfer of power and authority, first from the monarch 
to an aristocracy, and then from the few to the many. 
In former times, when the king failed, as he often did, 
there were the few nobles to act as a last resource, to 
conserve the prerogatives of authority and to uphold the 
power of the State. But in these times the right of both 
kings and nobles is questioned and denied, and all these 
safeguards are removed. Now the political power, in the 
leading nations at least, is lodged with the people, and the 
last reserves are called into the field. Thus, democracy is 
in a way a final thing, for beyond the people there are no 
reserves. Many things indicate that the age of kings is 
passing and the age of the people is coming, and hence the 
drift toward democracy. In a large sense it may be said 
that the progress of a people, its degree of political de- 
142 



THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY I43 

velopment, its growing consciousness of social brother- 
hood, is measured by the place which the people them- 
selves occupy in the affairs of government. The race is 
gaining what has been called the sense of humanity, and 
men are coming to social self-consciousness. Men are 
growing into the consciousness of human brotherhood 
and are beginning to revalue the life of the common man. 
And this is the inner spirit and moving power of de- 
mocracy. Many things indicate that the drift toward 
democracy is as inevitable as gravitation and as certain as 
the daybreak. We mention a few of these : 

I. The Growing Conception of Human Brotherhood. 
It is sometimes said that the conception of human brother- 
hood was first brought into the world by the Son of man ; 
but this is not strictly the case. There were adumbra- 
tions of this great truth in the life and teaching of many 
men before the Christian era. And yet it was the Son of 
man who brought this great truth out into the daylight 
and made it the possession of the whole human race. 

We find a few adumbrations of the truth of human 
brotherhood in Greece and Rome, in Persia and China, 
and these, though faint, are worthy of careful study. Thus 
Plutarch records the saying of Alexander '' that God is the 
common father of men, but more particularly of the good 
and virtuous" (Plutarch, ''Lives": Alexander). And 
Xenophon states that Cyrus, when dying, charged his son 
to have regard for the good of the human race (Xeno- 
phon, " Cyropaedia"). In Rome we find an approxima- 
tion to this idea in the teaching of the philosophers mainly 
of the Stoic school. Thus Cicero declares that " the 
whole world should be considered as one State, the com- 
mon home of gods and men; by nature we incline to love 
men, which fact is the foundation of law. A wise man 
does not regard himself as the inhabitant of any one place, 
but as a citizen of the whole world, counting it but one 



144 



THE CHRISTIAN STATE 



city " (" De Legibus," Bk. I). In his " De Officiis " he 
is even more explicit, declaring his belief in the universal 
brotherhood of man. But this was a kind of amiable and 
abstract philosophy which the writer himself never 
thought of putting into practice. In Epictetus there 
is a much clearer vision of the truth, and this man is feel- 
ing his way toward the light. He speaks of the master 
who is angry with his slave because he has misunderstood 
his orders, and is about to beat him. '' Slave yourself, 
will you not bear with your own brother who has Zeus 
for his progenitor, and is like a son of the same seed, 
and of the same descent from above ? . . . Will you not re- 
member who you are and whom you rule, that they are 
kinsmen, that they are brethren by nature, that they are 
the offspring of Zeus?" (" Epictetus," Bk. I, chap. 13.) 
In China, Confucius confesses that the good man loves 
all within the four seas as his brothers, but the sage limits 
this brotherhood to his own people. The idea of brother- 
hood in a narrow and partial sense, had taken hold of 
the best and noblest souls in antiquity, and no man can 
say when the idea first found its way into human thought. 
And this is precisely what we might expect in view of 
the fact that God loves all men and is ever seeking his 
own. It was a favorite saying of some of the early church 
fathers, as Origen, and Augustine in his " Retractations," 
that Christianity was as old as creation, and they endeav- 
ored not in vain to find traces of Christianity before 

Christ. 

Among the Jews we find a partial approximation to this 
great idea of human brotherhood, with its application in 
human equality. The Jews all traced their descent from 
Abraham, the father of the people, and thus they cher- 
ished the idea of brotherhood within national lines. In 
later times we find that the conception of the divine 
Fatherhood is growing in clearness and power, and here 



THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY I45 

and there it finds a voice in the words of a prophet. But 
not until we come to the later times and to Jesus Christ 
do we behold this truth in all its scope. Many writers, 
it is true, have shown that many of the moral precepts and 
spiritual ideas of Jesus of Nazareth can be met and 
matched in the early writers of the world. Be it so: 
yet it was the Son of man who first made these ideas cur- 
rent coin; he was the first to translate these ideas into 
life, and give them spiritual force; he it was "who 
wrought with human hands the creed of creeds," and 
gave that creed its vital power. 

One or two elements in his life and teaching may be 
noted. For one thing his manner of life and his station 
in society are revelations of some great truth of God and 
man. This One, whom men have agreed to call the Son 
of God, who came from God and went to God, lived a 
lowly life among the children of men. All his life he 
lived as a man among men making no differences of any 
kind in his attitude toward men, and never recognizing 
any of the distinctions of the society of his day. He 
grew up in little humble Nazareth, and was content to 
be known as the carpenter's son. He chose his disciples 
from the various walks of life with the most complete 
indifference to all the conventionalities of society. He, 
the Son of God, lived as the Son of man, allowing noth- 
ing to separate him from his fellows, and claiming kin- 
ship with all mankind. 

Not only so, but he lived in the full consciousness of 
the divine Fatherhood and his own Sonship, and this con- 
sciousness determined his whole life and thought. His 
first recorded words breathe the name of Father, and 
upon the cross he stays his soul upon this same blessed 
name. So full and potent is this consciousness in his 
life that it colors all his thought and determines all his 
teaching. 

K 



1^6 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

His one name for God is Father, and everything he 
said must be construed in the categories of that name. 
The Sermon on the Mount, which has been called the 
Magna Charta of the kingdom of God, has, as its great 
idea and fundamental basis, its regulative idea and its 
ruling note, this conception of divine Fatherhood and 
human brotherhood. In the hearing of the people he 
charges men to " call no man father on the earth ; for one 
is your Father who is in heaven. Neither be ye called 
masters; for one is your Master, even the Christ" 
(Matt. 23 : 9, 10). The sweep and significance of these 
words we have hardly begun as yet to see. But we have 
here the doctrine of human brotherhood set forth in the 
most unequivocal terms, and with the most unlimited ap- 
plication. The fact is, the Magna Charta, the Decla- 
ration of Independence, the Declaration of the Rights of 
the Man and the Citizen, the Proclamation of Emancipa- 
tion, are all implied here, and are only a matter of 

definition. 

Growing out of all this there is another element that has 
special significance for our purpose, and that is the worth 
of the human soul. In that Old World men set a very 
slight value upon the soul of the common man. Men be- 
lieved, indeed, that some souls had value, the souls of the 
great and the rich, the soul of the king and the priest, 
but it never entered into the thought of man that the soul 
of the common man, the slave, the peasant, the unlearned, 
had any real and intrinsic worth. But Jesus taught the 
world to believe in the worth of man, the common man, 
the child, the woman, the outcast, the no-caste, the publi- 
can, the sinner. In fact, it is far within the truth to say 
that this was his supreme and immortal discovery. He 
does not say very much directly upon this high theme, 
but this truth runs as a golden thread through all his 
teaching and appears as the moving impulse of his life. 



THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY I47 

He assumes that the best things of life are for all men, 
whatever may be their station or previous condition ; then 
he seeks to bring all men into the possession and appreci- 
ation of these good things. Thus it is that Jesus marks 
the transition from the old to the new, from the old age 
to the new time. 

These great ideas of Jesus were no doubt slow in get- 
tmg themselves inwrought into the life and thought of 
the world, but they are all implicit in Christianity, and 
soon or late they must become explicit and potent. ' The 
great ideas of Christianity as illustrated in the life and 
teachmg of Jesus Christ, and interpreted by the life and 
order of the early church, led by a straight course to 
democracy in government. So long as Christianity abides 
so long as its central ideas are cherished by men, so long 
autocracies of all kinds are challenged and democracy is 
only a question of apphcation. The great ideas of 
Christianity, when fully understood and faithfully prac- 
tised must lead by an inevitable logic to the democracy 
of all life. Where the Christianity of Christ is known 
and honored, democracy is only a question of time and 
dennition. 

The whole meaning of Christianity is spelled out in 
democracy, and the whole vitality of Christianity is im- 
plicated m the democratic movement. However it may 
be with any other factors that may be named, as con- 
tributing to the democratic <lrift. it is certain that the 
Christian idea is a pledge and prophecy of ultimate de- 
mocracy. While it is true that Christianity is not pri- 
marily concerned with forms of government, it is yet 
true that it must create a form that shall express its 
essential spirit. While it is also true that Christianity 
has no commission to change one form of government 
tor another, ,t yet remains true that it is inherently a 
democratic religion. It began among the common people 



148 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

and has as its Founder one who toiled at the carpenter's 
bench. It comes to men with the central truth of the 
Fatherhood of God, which carries with it the correlated 
truth of the brotherhood of man. Thus the democratic 
idea is woven into the very warp and woof of Christianity, 
and no papal ingenuity or imperial authority can tear it 
out without destroying the whole fabric. The great ideas 
of the gospel have given birth to this modern democratic 
movement, and they are the potent forces that are be- 
hind this drift. Not until these Christian ideas become 
old and effete and are cast aside forever will the struggle 
in behalf of democracy cease. So long as these ideas 
remain as the common inheritance of man, that long will 
this democratic movement continue. 

II The Growing Dominance of the Democratic Idea 
in Literature. In his lectures on " Heroes and Hero 
Worship," Carlyle accords a nigh place to the man of 
letters, and assigns him a most potent function in social 
progress. He quotes with approval the saying of Fichte, 
that the man of letters is a prophet, or, as he prefers to 
phrase it, a priest, continually unfolding the godlike to 
men Men of letters are a perpetual priesthood, from age 
to age teaching all men that a God is still present in 
their life. With prophetic insight they enter into that 
purpose which God is working out in our humanity, and 
like a true guide they show men the way in which they 
should direct their march. In all times the poet and the 
writer, the seer and the sayer, have been held in high 
honor and have fulfilled an important function m human 
society With the coming of Christianity into the world 
there have been given to man some great, vital, and 
vitalizing ideas, and these have slowly made their way 
among men. The men of letters, the prophets and priests 
of humanity, have more and more entered into these ideas, 
and have sought to interpret and enforce their meaning. 



THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY 1 49 

We can do no more than suggest a few items in this story 
of the democratic idea in English Hterature, and refer 
any person who is interested in this subject to the illumi- 
nating volumes of Professor Vida Scudder on " The Life 
of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets," and " Social 
Ideals in English Letters." 

Democracy, we are told, entered Great Britain with the 
church of Christ (Scudder, "Social Ideals," p. 7). But 
the great ideas of Christianity make their way very 
slowly, and it is centuries before they find even an ap- 
proximate expression. In course of time, however, these 
ideas make their power felt, and in the lapse of genera- 
tions they find self-expression among the people. The 
Middle Ages were dying and a new age is in the birth- 
throes. It was a time of social change and upheaval, and 
men are everywhere groping for the light. The people 
are coming to self-consciousness, and are seeking self- 
expression. Two great poets belong to this time, Lang- 
land and Chaucer, but only one of these has special sig- 
nificance for our theme. 

The poem of Langland, "The Vision of Piers the 
Plowman," belongs to one of the saddest periods of 
English history. In it the very heart-cries of the English 
people find expression, and throbbing through it are some 
great new aspirations which are truly prophetic. The 
ruling motif of the poem is indicative of the new thought 
that is finding its way among the people. Men are in sor- 
row and distress, they are oppressed and wronged, they 
are scattered and torn, with no one to help and deliver. 
Piers feels that this cannot be God's will for men, and so 
he looks for help to the priest and the knight ; and at last, 
when these fail, he himself becomes the deliverer of the 
people. Toward the close the plowman seems to disap- 
pear, and in his stead we see one like unto the Son of man. 
The dreamer is in church, and in the midst of the mass 



150 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

he suddenly sleeps, and beholds in vision Piers the plow- 
man coming in with a cross before the common people, 
marked with bloody wounds, and " like in all limbs to our 
Lord Jesus." " It would be a mistake to suppose that by 
this extraordinary image Langland meant exactly to iden- 
tify Piers with the Saviour of the world. To him the 
working man is simply the best embodiment of the Chris- 
tian idea" (Scudder, "Social Ideals," p. 36). Thus, 
under the figure of the peasant, in his sufferings and 
humiliation, Christ appears as the friend of the people 
and the Great Emancipator : 

For our joy and our health Jesus Christ of heaven, 

In a poor man's apparel pursueth us ever, 

And looketh upon us in the likeness and that with lovely cheer, 

To know us by our kind heart and casting our eyes 

Whether we love the Lord here before our Lord in bliss. 

For we are all Christ's creatures, and of his coffers rich 

And brethren as of one blood, as well beggars as earls. 

For nearly four centuries English poetry has no suc- 
cessor to " Piers the Plowman," though there were great 
poets who used the language. Shakespeare, universal 
genius as he was, had little of the seer's vision, and can- 
not be called a prophet of the social gospel. Milton the 
poet sings " his deathless unfathomable song " of para- 
dise and hell, but in his poetry he shows little interest in 
the struggles of the people for political emancipation. 
But Milton the prose writer speaks some of the bravest 
and boldest words in protest against tyranny and in- 
equality, and in favor of liberty and democracy. About 
the middle of the eighteenth century several writers ap- 
peared whose words were carried far and wide, and 
produced vast results. Rousseau was not a great man, 
measured by any of the standards of true greatness, 
but his influence has been most marked, not alone in 



THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY 151 

France, but in England as well. There is reason to be- 
lieve that both Burns and Shelley were familiar with his 
writings, and, as some one has said, it is not every 
mediocre writer of prose who is honored by having his 
words set to music by such a poet as Burns. 

During the later decades of the eighteenth century the 
new ideas found expression in the songs of several poets, 
but first among these must be named the Ayrshire plow- 
man. Through all the poems and songs of Burns there 
breathes a vast contempt for pretense and sham, and 
scorn for the belted knight and the self-important squire. 
Through all his words there runs the one clear note of 
equality and brotherhood. These prophetic lines throb 
with a passion for fraternity among all : 

What though on hamely fare we dine. 

Wear hodden gray, and a' that; 
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, 

A man's a man for a' that. 
For a' that and a' that, 

Their tinsel show, and a' that; 
The honest man, though e'er sae poor, 

Is king of men, for a' that. 

Then let us pray, that come it may — 

As come it will, for a' that — 
That sense and worth, o'er all the earth, 

May bear the gree, and a' that; 
For a' that and a' that 

It's comin' yet, for a' that. 
That man to man, the warld o'er, 

Shall brothers be for a' that. 

The heroes of Burns are plain, simple folk, like the 
rest of us, farmers and mechanics, men who honor their 
manhood and have scant regard for " dignities and a' 
that." No man had a higher love for honesty and sin- 
cerity, with independence and worth, and no man brings 
us nearer to the great heart of humanity. In Edinburgh, 



152 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

nearly a hundred years after his death, working men going 
home from work have begged for a sight of his statue, 
and then have turned home with a tear in the eye and a 
deeper respect for their manhood. 

With the coming of the nineteenth century we find a 
group of poets who may be called almost by preeminence 
the poets of democracy. Beginning with Wordsworth 
and Shelley we have a pretty unbroken succession down 
to the present day, in both England and America, in 
Tennyson and Browning, in Lowell and Whittier, in 
Arnold and Whitman. To these men, with many other 
minor poets may be given the high honor of being called 
the poets of the people and the prophets of democracy. 
In his earlier years Wordsworth's faith in the new de- 
mocracy gives his poems their highest aspirations and 
their fullest power; in fact, it may be said that Words- 
worth did not enter upon his poetic career till he had won 
his way to this new and splendid faith. All through his 
Hfe he clung to the belief that ''in God's pure sight" 
monarch and peasant are equal. All through his life he 
belonged — to use Lincoln's fine phrase — to the plain 
people, and he not only believed in poverty, but he prac- 
tised it (Scudder, "The Life of the Spirit," p. 75). 
He asked that education be made general that all might 
have a fair chance for the best things in life ; he had noth- 
ing but scorn for a social system that allowed men to be 
robbed of their birthright, and this was done wherever 
men were made the means and money the end. All his 
life he sorrowed at 

The injustice which hath made 
So wide a barrier between man and man. 

Shelley was a younger contemporary of Wordsworth, 
but he went far beyond his predecessor in his protest 
against tyranny and his passion for liberty. His passion 



THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY 1 53 

was even more vehement than Wordsworth's, though it 
must be confessed it was also less sane and balanced. 
The love of liberty and the hope of democracy glowed 
luminous and entrancing before the sensitive soul of the 
poet, and inspired some of his finest and greatest work. 
Through his " Prometheus Unbound " there rings a new 
and modern cry : 

I would fain 
Be what it is my destiny to be, 
The savior and the strength of suffering man, 
Or sink into the original gulf of things.— Act I. 

Shelley went so far in his hatred of tyranny that he 
almost despises all government, and so comes dangerously 
near to the praise of anarchy. With piercing insight his 
thought finds its way into the evils and wrongs of the 
systems of his day, yet he can see no way out except by 
the destruction of all governmental order and ecclesi- 
astical institutions. 

Tennyson and Browning, In a sense, belong to the same 
school of thought, and both are prophets of the age that 
is to be. Yet never were there two men more unlike, and 
in a way also more unlike their forerunners. Tennyson, 
as did Browning, struck many notes, and compassed 
nearly the whole gamut of human experience. In a way 
he was always an aristocrat, though he would have said 
that it was a government of the best that he desired and 
not a government by birth and rank alone. 

In Locksley Hall we hear this well-founded and 
vehement note of protest : 

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth ! 
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth ! 

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest nature's rule! 
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the fool ! 



1^4 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Later on in the poem he passes from negative protests 
to positive hopes, and now he sings of the time when 

The war drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were f url'd, 
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 

But in Browning the century comes to its fullest self- 
consciousness and self-expression. Browning, of all the 
poets of the century, may be called by easy preemmence. 
the prophet of man. Persons of all classes and ranks, of all 
ages and characters, move across his pages and play their 
little part, and moral worth is not by any means confined 
to any class or condition. The poet does not attempt to 
construct a philosophy of hf e ; rather he shows us human 
life from all sides and angles, and allows us to draw our 
own conclusions. But no one can long read his virile lines 
without finding that he has an unchanging hatred of 
shams and delusions, and that he has a burning passion 
for human brotherhood and equahty. 

The other poets that are named, Lowell, Whittier, 
Emerson and Whitman, in their verse reflect something 
of the life and passion and liberty of the New World. 
In a very true sense these four may all be called the 
poets of human brotherhood and the prophets of de- 
mocracy. Never do they strike their highest notes till 
they are protesting against human injustice of some kind 
and are pleading for liberty for all mankind. Then their 
words glow and throb with the fire and force and passion 
of a Hebrew prophet, and we are moved m spite of our- 
selves. Where so many of their poems are filled with this 
new spirit it is needless to specify examples. They all 
kept their early faith undimmed to the very end of life, and 
never wavered in their allegiance to the people's cause. 
Lowell's " Three Memorial Poems " are in full harmony 
with '' The Present Crisis," " On the Capture of Fugitive 
Slaves " and " The Search." Whittier's '' Voices of Free- 



THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY 1 55 

dom " Still throb with their early fire, and no one can read 
these words unmoved. In democracy the poet confesses 
his abiding faith in the ideal of his boyhood's time, and 
sees in it the 

Bearer of freedom's holy light, 
Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod; 
The foe of all which pains the sight. 
Or wounds the generous ear of God. 

Emerson is no less pronounced in his love of freedom, 
and on this high theme his words gain a new fire and 
passion. No one can easily forget those words read in 
Faneuil Hall, Boston: 

The word of the Lord by night 

To the waiting Pilgrims came, 
As they sat by the seaside. 

And filled their heart with flame. 

God said, I am tired of kings ; 

I suffer them no more; 
Up to my ears the morning brings 

The outcry of the poor. 

Think ye I made this ball 

A field of havoc and woe, 
Where tyrants great and tyrants small 

Might harry the weak and poor? 

There are many other singers, sometimes called the 
lesser poets— though the distinction is hardly a fair one— 
who stand close to the people and strike the notes of 
democracy. Be they lesser poets or not, they are no less 
miportant, for they are read by the people, even more 
than some of the greater poets, and thus give voice to the 
common aspiration. Charles Mackay and Gerald Massey, 
Matthew Arnold and Algernon Swinburne, Sidney La- 
nier and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Llenry N. Dodge and 
Richard Watson Gilder, Edwin Markham and Helen 



156 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Hunt Jackson are in the line of the true succession, and 
are voices of the coming dawn. These, and many others, 
are making the songs of the nations, and these democratic 
songs are harbingers of the democratic age. 

There is space only to name the great writers of prose 
who are in this true democratic succession, and are proph- 
ets of the advancing day. But beginning with Dickens 
and Carlyle we have a noble succession of men, both in 
fiction and in criticism, who at once profess this new 
faith and interpret it in many of its applications. The 
influence of these men, with Ruskin and Arnold, Maurice 
and Kingsley, George Eliot and Sir Walter Besant, Mrs. 
Humphry Ward and Richard Whiting, is simply im- 
measurable in its depth and potency. But no account of 
the growing dominance of the democratic ideal in liter- 
ature would be complete which did not mention the great 
service of the many great writers of the Continent who 
are all laborers together in this one great cause. La- 
mennais and Mazzini, Victor Hugo and George Sand, 
in the earlier time, and Tolstoy and Sienkiewicz, Gorky 
and Nietzsche in the later time, are among the potent in- 
fluences in the world to-day who all profess the new faith 
and hail the new day. From one cause and another, 
literature is coming very close to man, and is dealing 
with life as we find it; men are finding romance and 
poetry, not in far-away times and chivalric adventures, 
but in the common life of the people and in the aspirations 
of the plain working man. They who can best interpret 

the prophetic soul 
Of the great world, dreaming on things to come, 

are being hailed as the friends of man, and their writings 
are speaking home to the common heart with peculiar 
fascination. The fact that this democratic ideal is find- 
ing a voice in other lands shows plainly that it appeals to 



THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY 1 57 

the universal human heart. And it shows also that the 
great seers and prophets of humanity, whatever may be 
their speech or their nationality, all cherish the same hope 
and voice the same aspiration. In a large sense it may 
be said that the rank of an author to-day depends largely 
upon his passion for this social faith and his interest in 
the common people. 

III. A third factor that may be named is what may be 
called The General Diffusion of Education. It is not easy 
for the man of this modern world in a democratic land, 
to appreciate the conditions in the Old World, nor to 
realize how recent this educational movement is. What 
we call universal education is a very new thing in the 
world. It is true, as a suggestive writer has brought 
out, that in the great empires of antiquity there was a 
general and very high degree of mental development. In 
the Greek States education was widely diffused, and 
Kidd is no doubt justified in his contention that in Athens, 
in the time of Pericles, there was a higher and finer 
culture than has ever existed among an equal number of 
people in any land in the world (Kidd, ''Social Evolu- 
tion," chap. ix). But we must note one fact — that in all 
the Greek States there was a large slave class who were 
entirely shut out from all culture. This is the fact, how- 
ever, that has significance for our purpose — among the 
free citizens there was a generous culture of both mind 
and body, and this culture may be considered both as the 
cause and the effect of this free citizenship. 

" The modern age began with the invention of powder 
and printing," says Dean Hodges. " Before that the man 
with the book and the man on horseback directed the creed 
and the conduct of the neighborhood." The cavalier was 
so named from his chief characteristic — he rode a horse. 
This man, sitting in his saddle as upon a throne, clad in 
stout armor which protected him from fists and clubs 



1^8 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

and gave him some defense even against the sharp arrows 
of the time, this man on horseback was the natural ruler 
of his fellow-men. Beside the knight stood the priest 
with book in hand, who represented a greater kingdom 
and a mightier power— the kingdom of heaven and the 
power of God. This man, with his weird power and 
wizard learning controlled the everlasting destiny of 
men, and could open or shut the doors of the celestial 
world. " Then came powder and printing, and the whole 
world was turned upside down." The man on horseback 
found himself confronted by the man with the gun, and 
the old inequahty vanished. The man with the book 
found himself faced by a people with books in hand, and 
his old power was gone. Added to all this the people be- 
gan to study the Bible, that, thanks to the printing-press, 
had been placed in their hands, and they found some 
remarkable things. These people studied the words of 
the Prophet of Nazareth, and they found that he did not 
favor a class but was the friend of man. " The Bible be- 
came the placard of a revolution whose Marseillaise was 
the Magnificat" (Hodges, "Faith and Social Service," 

pp. 10-13). 

This diffusion of education shows itself m several ways, 
all of which are significant in their relation to democracy. 
The system of free public schools has done much to pro- 
mote equality and good-fellowship. Under the beneficent 
shadow of this system provision is made for the equal 
education of all classes and conditions of children. Boys 
and girls from the homes of the rich and the homes of the 
poor sit side by side in the schoolroom, and not infre- 
quently it happens that the child of the mechanic and the 
farmer outdistances the child of the banker and the 
manufacturer. Such children learn to respect one another 
and cliques and castes do not make much headway. The 
public-school system, which grew out of the democratic 



THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY 1 59 

idea, is now one of the agencies that is making for de- 
mocracy and is guaranteeing its perpetuity. 

Then the free press which, in a way, is an effect of 
the new enfranchisement, is also a potent force in the 
democratic drift. So long as Milton's " Areopagitica " 
remains in the language of men, that long the printing- 
press will be free and unlicensed. And so long as it 
remains free and unlicensed so long democracy is safe, 
and tyranny can never be undisturbed. This free press, 
with its varied information and world-wide outlook, ap- 
peals to all classes of people, and challenges them to think, 
to consider great problems, and to know what is going 
on in the world. The old order of prophets may appear 
no more, but as Carlyle suggests, " we have a new order 
of preaching friars. One of these preaching friars settles 
himself in every village and builds himself a pulpit, 
which he calls a newspaper. Therefrom he preaches 
what most momentous doctrine is in him for man's sal- 
vation; and dost not thou look and hsten?" (Carlyle, 
"Sartor Resartus"). 

Along with this goes the wide and ever-widening dif- 
fusion of periodical literature of a more ambitious char- 
acter. In these magazines and reviews the great ques- 
tions of current interest are debated, sometimes with 
real insight, often with specious arguments, but withal 
contributing to the general inquiry and investigation. 
A reading people may be a fickle and superficial people, 
subject to sudden changes of opinion and likely to form 
judgments without due deliberation, but it is inconceiv- 
able that such a people should ever be contented slaves 
and political underlings. Autocracies of all kinds are 
doomed where thought is free. Democracy is inevitable 
where the people read and think. 

And one other factor may be noted here that has di- 
rect relation to this democratic drift. In all times the 



l60 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

order of prophets has ever been the foe of tyrants. It 
was so in ancient Israel, and it was so in modern Europe. 
The fact is, what we call the great Reformation grew out 
of an order of prophets who, with a passion for truth 
and with the Scriptures in hand, denounced the corrup- 
tions in the Church and pleaded for liberty in the State. 
Carlyle has said that Luther's words, rough and rude 
as they were, were half-battles and caused the pope to 
tremble and the ruler to give heed. Queen Mary, in 
Scotland, declared that she feared John Knox more than a 
whole battalion of soldiers. It is a matter of historical 
record that the free ministers of the free churches in 
Virginia and Massachusetts were the most outspoken 
foes of autocracy and the most consistent exponents of 
democracy. A free ministry recruited from the ranks 
of the people, with the gospel of Christ in hand, with 
the passion for souls, and with the fear of God before 
their eyes, constitutes one of the most potent forces of 
democracy and forever makes autocracy impossible. 

IV. There is one other force and factor that may be 
noted, and that is The Momentum of the Democratic 
Idea. There are some ideas so congenial to human 
nature that they need only be promulgated to be accepted. 
The moment the worth of the common man is admitted, 
that moment the common man begins to respect himself. 
The moment it is admitted that all men possess certain 
inalienable rights, that moment privileges begin to 
tremble. 

The history of the democratic movement during the 
past six hundred years is one long illustration of this 
principle. About the beginning of the thirteenth century 
we find that certain classes of the people in England 
are coming to self-consciousness and are beginning to 
claim their rights in the State. At Runnymede they 
make their claims heard and exact from an unwilling 



THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY l6l 

king that great document the Magna Charta. "These 
are our claims," the barons said, '' and if they are not 
instantly granted, our arms shall do us justice." King 
John, who was keen-sighted enough to know what the 
parchment implied, exclaimed in a fury : " And why do 
they not demand my crown also ? By God's teeth I will 
not grant them liberties which will make me a slave" 
("Historian's History," Vol. XVHI, chap. ix). This 
charter wrote out the consciousness that was developing 
among the people, but even more important than all it 
marked the transit of power from the one to the many. 
Certain rights are defined, a principle is recognized, a 
movement is begun, and history will write the conclusion 
of the story. 

It is true that this movement has not followed a 
straight course, ever upward and onward, for at times 
there have been many deflections and eddies. And some- 
times, indeed, the stream seems to disappear like the river 
flowing into the desert. Yet the stream, though hidden 
for a time, is not really lost, but it soon bursts forth again 
with renewed volume and purified by its subterranean 
discipline. In fact, the democratic movement seems to 
gain in volume and intensity as time goes on by thus 
illustrating the principle of physics that the momentum 
IS the velocity multiplied by the weight. The history 
of the extension of the franchise in England is the best 
illustration of this principle. At the beginning of the 
nineteenth century the franchise was narrowly restricted 
and two-thirds of the House of Commons were ap- 
pointed by peers or other influential persons. One by one 
however, the rights of the people are recognized, little 
by httle the restrictions are removed; the franchise passes 
into new hands, and the transit of power from the few to 
the many proceeds apace. Thenceforward the movement 
IS onward. The moment the franchise is granted to any 



l62 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

class of persons in the State, that moment the hour of the 
people is beginning to strike. The tendency is ever toward 
an extension of the franchise and not toward its restric- 
tion, and the momentum of the movement is carrying it 
ever forward. 

The same process may be traced in the history of pop- 
ular government in America. At first in the American 
colonies the privilege of suffrage was limited to the mem- 
bers of the recognized churches, and certain persons 
were thus disfranchised. But in these colonies the worth 
of man was recognized, and the freedom of the soul was 
fundamental. Where such principles are current the 
fully democratic State is only a matter of time and appli- 
cation. At the time of the Revolution the most of the 
States restricted the privilege of public office by certain 
property and religious qualifications. " No atheists, no 
free-thinkers, no Jews, no Roman Catholics ; no man, in 
short, who was not a believer in some form of the 
Protestant faith, could ever be governor of New Jersey, 
New Hampshire, Connecticut, or Vermont" ("Mac- 
Master's History," Vol. HI, p. 148). But one by one all 
the restrictions upon the people and their officials have 
been removed, and to-day there is no religious or property 
test of any kind in any American State. We are not sur- 
prised, therefore, to find that a respectable and increasing 
proportion of the people in all of the States are contend- 
ing for the removal of all restrictions on account of seK. 
The history of popular government during the last six 
hundred years shows that when once the rights of man 
are recognized and the franchise is granted to any class, 
it is only a question of time and definition when the last 
restriction will be removed and the franchise will be- 
come universal. And when once the people have entered 
into this privilege they are never likely to surrender it. In 
fact, in America, this right of the people is embodied in 



THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY 163 

the fundamental law of the land, and it can only be 
changed by the vote of the people themselves. As the 
people are never likely to pass a self-denying ordinance 
shutting themselves out from this privilege, there is little 
probability that universal sovereignty will perish from the 
earth. 

The empire of Russia— to take an illustration from con- 
temporary history— is passing through this same process, 
and is repeating the history of England and America. It 
may be many generations before the process works out to 
its full conclusions, but there can be no doubt about the 
result. The things that make for democracy are at work 
in that mighty land, and these things are far more likely 
to increase than diminish. The democratic drift is seen 
in Russia, and no efforts of czar and reactionaries can 
long delay it. 

Then the presence of a democratic State in any part of 
the world is a continual witness for democracy. The 
American republic, as Sir Henry Maine points out in his 
" Popular Government," has greatly influenced the favor 
into which popular government grew. It disproved the 
once universal assumption that no republic could govern 
a large territory, and that no strictly republican govern- 
ment could be stable. The success of popular govern- 
ment in America, as John Morley points out, has been the 
strongest incentive to the extension of popular govern- 
mAit at home. And added to all this is the remarkable 
success of popular government in the thriving colonies in 
Australia and New Zealand, where so many democratic 
experiments have had such a successful termination. 
In brief, the democratic movement is gaining direction 
and momentum because of its very quality and power, 
and its extension throughout the globe is only a question 
of time and application. 

There are two things growing out of all this, which 



164 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

may be noted here for our guidance and our encourage- 
ment. For one thing, as we have seen, democracy is not 
alone a form of government, but it is also a confession 
of faith. It is a spirit in the hearts of the people before 
it is an institution of the State. It has its origin and its 
vitality in certain great conceptions and convictions in the 
rank and file of the people, and it can neither be hastened 
by statutes nor delayed by denials. It is not possible 
without these convictions and conceptions ; but with these 
its coming is only a matter of time and application. This 
being so, the believer in democracy can readily perceive 
the work that he must do in order to extend this move- 
ment among the people. The one who believes in liberty 
for himself must believe in liberty for all mankind. The 
best way to hasten on the advent of democracy in any land 
is to make the people ready for it. And when the people 
are ready for it democracy is as inevitable as the sunrise. 
For another thing, we see that the democratic movement 
is in line of the great purpose of God for his human 
children. The great purpose which God is carrying 
forward in the world, so far as we can read that purpose 
in revelation and in history, is the creation of a kingdom 
of free spirits in which men live together in righteousness 
and each one lives for the common life. The State, 
which is the people organized in a political capacity in 
behalf of certain great and vital human ends, is an im- 
portant agency through which men can apprehend and 
realize the purpose of God in their social and political life. 
The State is the medium through which the people can 
co-operate in their search after liberty and justice and 
brotherhood. But this is not all, for the one conception 
of man which science accepts and history indorses, im- 
plies that every man shall learn to live for the purpose of 
God and shall co-operate for the common good. The 
Christian conception of man, which conception it may be 



THE DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY 1 65 

said is in full harmony with the scientific conception, de- 
mands that every man shall honor the relations of his 
life and shall make his own voluntary contribution to the 
social life. But these conceptions, when realized and 
applied, are nothing less than the democratic idea of the 
State. This means that the democratic or free State, the 
people organized in a political capacity and voluntary 
co-operation in behalf of the common welfare, is the one 
form of the State which the Christian conception of man 
creates and allows. There is a right deeper than the 
right of kings to rule, and that is the right of our hu- 
manity to be the medium through which the law of 
humanity, coming from the unseen source of law, is pub- 
lished (Nash, "Ethics and Revelation," p. 87). There 
is a necessity as deep as life and as urgent as gravitation 
in favor of the democratic State, a necessity that is 
grounded in the very task of humanity and the very 
nature of man. Democracy is the principle of Christian 
brotherhood in political relations. Democracy is the one 
idea of human society that is befriended by the universe, 
legitimated in history, in accord with the Christian spirit. 
and inevitable in the future. Democracy is inevitable 
where Christianity is regnant and men know one another 
as brothers. The whole process of history and the 
whole meaning of revelation show that the age of 
kings is passing and the age of the people is coming. The 
shoulder of God is behind the rising tide, and the child 
can sweep back the ocean with a broom more easily than 
the autocrat can stay this rising flood. However it may 
be with the other factors that we have named, it is cer- 
tain that the presence of Christianity anywhere in the 
world is a sufficient guarantee of the ultimate establish- 
ment of a democratic society among men. 



VIII 

THE ADVANTAGES OF DEMOCRACY 

IN these modern times what we call democracy is fast 
becoming a fact in the life of the foremost nations. 
The time has come, in view of this, for men to pause and 
consider what this movement means and whither it tends. 
This inquiry is especially needed in view of the divergent 
and conflicting estimates which are held concerning the 
meaning and the merit of democracy. Thus it appears 
that the estimates of democracy range through the whole 
scale, from the most enthusiastic praises of the movement 
to the most dismal forecasts for the future of man- 
kind. Some men regard this movement as little else than 
the coming of the kingdom of God on earth, while others, 
with certain popes, look upon it as little better than Anti- 
christ. 

In view of all this, it is worth our while to consider 
some of the advantages and the meaning of democracy, 
and then to note some of the dangers and disadvantages 
of the movement. 

I. The Personal Meaning of Democracy. The idea of 
democracy, if we go behind forms to realities, is not so 
much a mode of government as a confession of human 
equality. It is the confession that the downmost man of 
society has an infinite worth. It is the recognition by all 
that the least and lowliest man is entitled to fair con- 
sideration. 

At first sight it must be confessed that the facts of life 
seem to pronounce a decided negative to our conception 
of human equality and worth. That men are not equal 
i66 



THE ADVANTAGES OF DEMOCRACY 167 

in physical and mental endowments, that there are vast 
natural differences among them which no one can mini- 
mize, that there are some men on whom nature seems to 
have set the stamp of superior merit from birth, as 
there are others who bear the marks of inferiority written 
all over their bodies — these are facts which are patent to 
all observers. Nothing is gained for the cause of truth 
or democracy by trying to deny facts which are to be seen 
in every society and land. But much is gained both for 
democracy and man when we distinguish between the 
things that are incidental and the things that are essential 
in man's life. It is sufficient at this point to say that we 
must make a distinction between the things that belong 
to the essence and quality of man's life, and those which 
have to do merely with its form and conditions. 

And this is precisely what the democratic creed does. 
It affirms in the most direct and positive way the essential 
equality and native worthfulness of all men; it affirms 
that the differences and inequalities among men belong 
to the form and surface of life and do not affect its inner 
quality and essence. This is the fundamental affirmation 
of democracy, and the denial of this is the denial of the 
first article of its faith. This doctrine does not mean that 
all men are equally endowed with intellectual powers or 
that they all are of equal moral worth, for this is a thesis 
which no one would seriously undertake to maintain. It 
does not mean that all men are capable of the same results, 
or that one man is worth as much to society as another. 
But it does mean that every man has his place and his 
value, and this place society is bound to grant and this 
value society is bound to recognize. It does mean that all 
men are capable of intelligence, and the differences that 
exist among them are due less to natural endowments than 
to later conditions. It does mean that intellectual in- 
equality, so far as it exists, is common to all classes, and 



l68 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

is as great among the completely emerged tenth as in 
the completely submerged tenth (Ward, " Applied Soci- 
ology/' P- lOo). This creed affirms that moral worth and 
dignity belong to all men as men, and hence they are in no 
sense dependent upon the kind of work they do or the 
station they hold in society. All truth, Helvetius main- 
tained, is within the reach of all men, and this, says Ward, 
is certainly true for all practical truth. The democratic 
creed accepts this doctrine and endeavors to put it into 
practice and to establish it in social institutions. It rests 
upon the idea that every man has worth, and that his 
personality is entitled to as much honor as the personality 
of any other man. It rests upon the conviction that the 
downmost man has some meaning in the total meaning of 
the State, and this meaning is entitled to expression. It 
rests upon the affirmation that his interests are entitled to 
equal consideration with the interests of the most con- 
spicuous man in society. And it assumes that the highest 
goods of life are for all men, and it insists that the down- 
most man shall be lifted up into the possession and appre- 
ciation of these goods. In a word, it assumes that the 
personality and the interest of the common man are as 
much entitled to consideration and expression as those 
of the topmost man. 

I. It is just here that we come in sight of the first great 
advantage of democracy. It awakens in men a sense of 
their worth and possibilities ; and it summons men to 
honor this worth and to realize their possibilities. Mat- 
thew Arnold has shown in his essay on democracy that 
the chief value of aristocratism thus far has been the 
creation in men of what may be called " the grand style." 
But the time has come when the people themselves are 
coming to appreciate their worth and dignity, and are be- 
ginning to realize that there are high values in their lives 
and upward possibilities before them. This sense of 



THE ADVANTAGES OF DEMOCRACY 169 

worth, this outlook upward, has a remarkable power of 
sobering men and filling them with a sense of their dig- 
nity ; it has a strange power of uplifting the common man 
and developing in him a sense of his social worth. In a 
word, the first advantage of democracy is found in this, 
that it recognizes the worth and dignity of the average 
^man and that it creates in this man a new honor for his 
personality and a new consciousness of his responsibility. 

2. Again, democracy means a great gain to man in that 
it summons each man to play a man's part in society. 
It throws a responsibility on each man and gives him a 
stake in the State's struggle for life and progress. 

Mazzini, one of the great prophets of democracy, has 
given us a noble conception of the mission of humanity, 
and has shown the work of man in this task of humanity. 
Humanity, which he calls the living word of God, the col- 
lective and continuous being, is the only interpreter of 
God's law. Humanity, said another thinker of the last cen- 
tury, is a man ever learning; and so, says Mazzini, it is a 
man whose education is ever progressing, a being whose 
task is never ended (Mazzini, by Bolton King, p. 242). 
This task of humanity is the task of all its members, and 
it demands the co-operation of all with all, for the sake of 
all. " Herein in this necessity lies the legitimacy of de- 
mocracy, of its aspirations after the emancipation, the ele- 
vation, the co-operation of all; herein also lies the secret 
of its inevitable power, inevitable as the accomplishment 
of the designs of God." " For democracy is not the mere 
liberty of all, but government freely consented to by all 
and acting for all " (Mazzini, " Life and Writings," Vol. 
VI, pp. 225, 117, 115). 

In a monarchy the field of struggle for the common 
man is greatly restricted, and his interest in the social 
welfare is almost zero. His interest in life is largely 
confined to the efifort to secure food and raiment for him- 



170 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

self and his family; as he has no part in the government 
he feels no responsibility for the social welfare. Whole 
ranges of possible human interest and activity He entirely 
beyond his ken and conscience. He has little to do be- 
yond the acceptance of his place in the social order with a 
dutiful submission to the will of superiors. Consider- 
ations of social and national welfare do not disturb him, 
for the reason that he has no responsibility for the social 
order. 

In a democracy, however, all this is changed. Now the 
average man is called to wear the toga of citizenship and 
is summoned to take thought for the common life. The 
responsibility for the State is laid upon the minds and 
hearts of the pjpple themselves, and every one has a part 
in the total task of the State. The people themselves 
must face and solve all the problems of the State; they 
must conserve the social welfare and must co-operate for 
the common good ; they must frame legislation and must 
form the nation's conscience; in a word, in a democracy 
every citizen is called to bear the burden and heat of the 
State's struggle for Hfe and progress. Two things grow 
out of all this which have vital relation to the moral 
worth and progress of man. For one thing, the moral 
worth or worthlessness of each man is revealed and reg- 
istered in the way he fulfils his social and political duties 
and learns to take thought for the common welfare. 
That is to say, no man's moral life is complete, no one 
is a man in all the reach and meaning of the divine ideal, 
till he has become a citizen and has learned to play a 
man's part in the life of the world. 

And for another thing this life of citizenship is itself 
a training school for man in social life and moral prog- 
ress. Since each man is a citizen in the State he must 
prepare himself for citizenship, and must do a citizen's 
work. This very work of preparation for citizenship is 



THE ADVANTAGES OF DEMOCIL\CY I7I 

one of the best parts of his moral discipline, as his devo- 
tion to the public welfare is the best expression of his 
moral worth. This advantage of democracy is not often 
considered, and yet it is fundamental and vital. Carlyle 
objected to popular government for the reason that it im- 
posed burdens upon men which they were ill prepared 
to bear. He was shrewd enough to see that many men 
in the most favored land are entirely unfitted for citizen- 
ship, and to give them a voice in the affairs of State is 
simply to invite disaster. 

The creation of a moral world, however, implies a 
moral process. The art of Hfe is learned by the process 
of living. Every child learns how. to walk by actually 
walking. Swimming is not learned k^ a parlor by a 
text-book, but by actual practice in the water. :\Ien 
achieve a moral character by passing through a moral 
discipline. Men are most fully trained for citizenship 
by actually meeting the duties of a citizen. :\Ien who 
are free to choose their religion will often make mis- 
takes, but it is plain that every man's religion has vitality 
and value just so far as it is a personal choice. An in- 
herited religion is about as artificial and external as in- 
herited wealth or title. The Reformers did a bold thing 
when they gave the Bible Into the hands of men, but their 
action has made for true religion. The Creator of all did 
a bolder thing when he entrusted to man the making of 
his own destiny, but in so doing he showed what were the 
things he most highly prized. If the creation of a king- 
dom of free spirits is the purpose which God is carrying 
forward in the world, then the time must come when men 
must take into their own hands the process of social de- 
velopment. Life from beginning to end is a discipline, and 
the discipline of living is the best preparation for Hfe. 
Men are trained for citizenship by attempting to fulfil 
the duties of a citizen. 



1^2 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Thus, a democracy is a school of citizenship, and this 
is one of its chief values. Wendell Phillips, in his 
notable oration on " The Scholar in a Republic," has de- 
clared that when we trust the people, the wise and the 
ignorant, the good and the bad, with the gravest ques- 
tions, in the end we educate the race. And in the end you 
secure, not perfect institutions, not necessarily good ones, 
but the best institutions possible while human nature is 
the basis and the only material to build with. Phillips 
had the most unwavering faith in the people, and he 
showed his faith by his works. He believed that the free 
discussion of public questions was the best education the 
people could have, both in citizenship and in life. It has 
been pointed out by Gibbon that we have two educations, 
one that is derived from teachers, and the other that 
we give ourselves. The latter is the only real education 
the great majority of mankind receive, and withal it is 
the best possible education. It is better to think wrongly 
than not to think at all. Intelligence can only be trained 
by use; conscience can only be made by bringing moral 
and political questions before its bar for adjudication; 
life can only be learned by living. If the creation of in- 
telligence, conscientiousness, and self-control in the 
people is any part of the meaning of the world and the 
discipline of life, then a democracy abundantly justifies 

itself. 

The best friend of democracy will probably admit that 
it has some serious defects, and that it does not always 
produce the results that were anticipated. In a de- 
mocracy it often happens that there is much social fric- 
tion, and sometimes the machinery of government seems 
to creak wofully. But before we pass an adverse judg- 
ment upon democracy and extol monarchy or aristoc- 
racy, it may be well to pause and ask what is the real 
work of the State. The real work of the State, the one 



THE ADVANTAGES OF DEMOCRACY I73 

task which explains all other tasks, is the union of all in 
behalf of all through the socialization of their life and 
their voluntary co-operation for the common life. That 
is, the State is the medium of the mutual sacrifices and 
services of the people, and in so far as it is such a medium 
it is fulfilling its end. The smooth and quiet working 
of the machinery of government in a monarchy is an in- 
teresting sight, and to those who see nothing beyond the 
machinery, monarchy is an ideal form of government. 
But the discipline of men in moral will, the training of 
men in the art of living together, after all are the real 
concerns of the world, and as these results are achieved 
the real purpose of the State is subserved. 

3. There is one other advantage in democracy that may 
be named under the head of the personal advantages. 
Democracy means freedom of self-expression, and it 
means equality of opportunity ; it means that every man's 
personality is honored and every man's contribution to 
society is desired. 

In the nations of the Old World society was divided 
into castes and classes, with impassable barriers between. 
In a monarchical and aristocratic State society is still 
divided into classes built upon blood or property with 
social lines sharply drawn. All this means limitation of 
the area of aspiration and opportunity for the average 
man. The range of opportunity before the common man 
under such circumstances is strictly limited, and the de- 
mand that is made upon the average man is likewise lim- 
ited. Each man is expected to remain in his class and to 
follow the calling of his fathers. By the very nature of 
the case a society with a rigid system of castes and classes 
is an unprogressive society, even where it is not entirely 
stationary. In an aristocratic society change is always 
difficult and progress is always slow ; in fact, aristocratic 
societies dread change, and do not believe in progress. 



174 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

But even more significant than this is the fact that in 
an aristocratic and stratified society very httle is expected 
of the common man. He is required, of course, " to 
know his betters," and is charged to be " content with the 
station in hfe assigned him by providence." He is re- 
garded as the divinely appointed hewer of wood and 
drawer of water, and for this httle education is needed. 
By walls that are real, though they may not be of stone, 
he is shut out of many regions of life and opportunity. 
By the necessities of the case he is denied opportunity 
for self-expression beyond a narrow range, and has thus 
little scope for any talents he may possess. An aristo- 
cratic society rests upon the assumption that the so-called 
lower classes are composed of inferior people with little 
natural ability, people of whom nothing much is ex- 
pected and on whom the gift of opportunity would simply 
be wasted. 

But in a democracy all this is changed, and the assump- 
tion is different. According to the first article of the 
democratic faith men are entitled to liberty, and should 
have equal opportunity for self-expression. Democracy 
assumes that every man's life has worth; it assumes that 
he has some endowment which is of social value ; it de- 
mands that each man shall have opportunity for the full 
expression of his personality, and it insists that each 
,man shall have scope for all of his powers. It is some- 
times supposed that democracy means the widening of 
the way into political life, thus enabling the child of lowly 
birth to rise to the highest office. It means this but it 
means immeasurably more than this. It means that the 
life of the average man has high possibilities, and it 
asks that the door of opportunity shall be opened for 
him. Thus in democratic America it has happened that 
many of the men who have achieved truest success and 
have made the largest contribution to the national wel- 



THE ADVANTAGES OF DEMOCRACY I75 

fare have been men from the so-called humbler walks in 
life. Napoleon boasted that he had opened a career for all 
talents, and this boast of the dictator is the achievement 
of democracy. 

11. The Social Benefits of Democracy. According to 
democracy the people are sovereign, and each man must 
live a royal life. According to democracy the govern- 
ment, which is of the people, is also by the people, and 
thus the quality of the government depends upon the 
quality of the people. This means that the State has an 
interest in every one of its citizens, and that no one can 
live an unintelligent and unsocial life without danger 
by so much to the State. And it means also that the 
whole life and worth of the State are under bonds to 
take thought for its more backward members and to 
create in them a fitness for citizenship. Some aspects of 
this principle will become plain as we proceed with our 
inquiry. 

In these latter times a great new fateful term has 
come into human speech, and in the word solidarity is 
implied one of the most vital principles of social thought. 
** The crowning discovery of modern physical science is 
the unity of the universe, the oneness of all things 
visible and invisible in this great universal system of 
matter and force and law" (Moss, in "Missionary 
Centenary Addresses," p. 173). The world is an organic 
totality, and all things move together because all things 
are linked together. The very conception of an indi- 
vidual implies a larger whole, of which the individual is 
but a part. The individual is nothing apart from the life 
of the race, and the life of the race finds expression in 
and through the human individual. Thus we are com- 
pelled to think of humanity not as a series of disconnected 
and isolated individuals and fragments, but as the inter- 
related and interdependent members of an organic whole. 



176 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Each man is the richer or the poorer, the stronger or 
the weaker for the virtues and the vices, the diseases or 
the health, the industry or the indolence of the people 
who perished before the dawn of history. The sins and 
mistakes of long-dead empires cast their shadows over 
our civilization, and we must pay the penalty of crimes 
committed by the men who built the pyramids. Society 
may draw its imaginary lines of national and social dis- 
tinctions, and may resolve that Jews shall have no dealings 
with Samaritans, and the East Side shall have no part in 
Fifth Avenue. But the facts of solidarity take no ac- 
count of these imaginary lines, and make us see that after 
all we are all one. Never again can the man who thinks 
in the categories of Christianity and sociology think of 
humanity as a series of individuals each complete in him- 
self ; rather, he must think of it as an organism in which 
the co-operations of the parts maketh the increase of the 
whole, a body in which each but subserves the other's 
gain. In the spirit of Cain one class in the community 
may deny the bond of brotherhood and may ask, " Am 
I my brother's keeper ? " but in a hundred ways the dis- 
honored bond will assert itself and hard necessity will 
compel man to take thought for the things of others. 
The plague and the pestilence are sometimes the most 
effective preachers of brotherhQP)(J-^«f}'{;^^ch in emphatic 
and undeniable terms,^;^^^ q^^ j^^th made of one blood 
all nations and .c1 PIS c^g ^^ ^^^ r^^^ misery, the poverty, 
^"^av^f: crime of the East Side affect the health, the 
"security, and the taxation of Fifth Avenue; and Fifth 
Avenue cannot be perfect till the East Side is changed. 
" There will be no pure air for the correctest Levite to 
breathe till the laws of sanitation have been applied to 
the moral slums" (Jones, "Browning," p. 63). 

All this serves to bring out the relation of this law 
of solidarity to the democratic State. For one thing, in 



THE ADVANTAGES OF DEMOCRACY 1 77 

a democracy the vote of the scholar and saint counts for 
no more than the vote of the ignoramus and the hoodlum. 
What shall we do under these circumstances? Shall we 
take the ballot away from the hoodlum and give it to 
the scholar? We cannot do that, and what is more, we 
ought not attempt to do it. The thing for the scholar 
to do is to transform the hoodlum into a full-rounded 
man, and to provide that there shall be no such unworthy 
members in the State. Thus democracy with its universal 
suffrage puts every man under bonds to take thought 
for the common welfare and to help his less fortunate 
brother. Democracy puts the resources and the in- 
telligence of all in pledge in behalf of the weaker and 
more backward members of society. 

There are those who bewail the fact of universal 
suffrage, and see in it nothing but a leveling down. 
Others have a chronic distrust of the people, and believe 
the affairs of State have fallen into incompetent hands. 
But much of this distrust of the people on the part of the 
educated and cultured portion of the community grows 
out of an utter ignorance of the great heart of the people 
themselves. And some of it also grows out of the subtle 
hope that in some way the bond of human brotherhood 
and social obligation may be annulled. The cultured 
and ease-loving class who find life a pleasant affair find 
that the social obligations of human brotherhood are 
irksome and heavy. Many are not willing to do their 
whole duty toward their less fortunate fellows, and are 
not willing to use their advantages in life as so many 
levers for uplifting their degraded brothers. They ob- 
ject to democracy for the reason that it puts the strong 
and competent under bonds to take thought for the weak 
and defective. They see clearly enough that no demo- 
cratic State is safe and satisfactory so long as one-half 
of the voters are ignorant and venal. But many are not 

M 



178 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

willing to accept their full share of social responsibility 
and seek to make such voters impossible. The easiest 
way out, to their minds, is to deny the full privileges 
of citizenship to their less qualified brothers. Wendell 
Phillips has said, and his words should be carefully 
pondered, " No democracy ever claimed that the vote of 
ignorance and crime was as good in any sense as that of 
wisdom and virtue. It only asserts that crime and ig- 
norance have the same right to vote that virtue has. 
Only by allowing that right, and so appealing to their 
sense of justice and throwing upon them the burden of 
their full responsibility, can we hope ever to raise crime 
and ignorance to the level of self-respect" (Martyn, 
" Life of Phillips," p. 581). Men are naturally so selfish, 
so exclusive in their interest, that only by some such con- 
cern for themselves can they be induced to consider their 
brothers' welfare. Democracy emphasizes this bond of 
brotherhood and lays upon each citizen the burden of his 
social obligation. 

The idea of democracy, we have seen, is less a form 
of government than a confession of human brother- 
hood. Its fundamental principle is equality, its inner 
spirit is confidence in one another, and its supreme con- 
cern is interest in the other man. Thus democracy, when 
true to its source and its ideal, is inspired by the Christian 
spirit, as Christianity when true to its ideal and aim 
creates the democratic State. Christianity, in its first 
article, is confidence in men ; it is a passion for the down- 
most man; it is a missionary enterprise seeking to help 
the other man and to create in him a full consciousness 
of his worth. Democracy in so far as it is true to its 
source and spirit, believes in the possibilities of the most 
backward man; it holds its resources in pledge for his 
uplifting, and it seeks to create in him the full conscious- 
ness of a citizen. The believer in democracy, who has 



THE ADVANTAGES OF DEMOCRACY I79 

even a touch of the Christian spirit, can never rest con- 
tent so long as a single soul in the State is unfit for 
citizenship, and is living an unprivileged life. 

And this means that the whole worth of the people is 
held in pledge for the uplifting of the downmost man in 
the State. The spirit of democracy is not only a confession 
of faith, but it is also a principle of action. Democracy 
means that men are brothers, and that each is responsible 
for his brother's keeping. It means that all men are 
under bonds to help all other men who need help. Men 
are very slow in learning that each is his brother's 
keeper, and that all are under obligations to each. In 
view of their social results in the education of man, we 
may thank God for microbes and bacilli, for they have 
been the great promoters of human sympathy and of the 
sense of social responsibility. " They preach the gospel 
of brotherhood far and wide, saying in such tones that 
people are bound to sit up and listen : We are all mem- 
bers one of another; if one neglected member suffer, all 
the other members may, by reason of these very germs 
be called upon to suffer with it" (Brown, ''The Social 
Message of the Modern Pulpit," p. 162). Thus de- 
mocracy, which is a confession of human brotherhood, is 
also a missionary principle which impels men to go forth 
in an effort to uplift the downmost man and to give him 
a true inheritance in the State. 

III. The Political Advantages of Democracy De- 
mocracy in the words of its best representative, means a 
government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people. That a democratic form of government has 
advantages not possessed by any other government is 
obvious for several reasons. 

T. In a democratic government the interests of all of 
the people are most likely to be subserved. In a de- 
mocracy government is largely a government by public 



l3o THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Opinion, and public opinion is made up of the interests, 
the sentiments, the convictions, and the demands of the 
people. For this reason the government is ever in close 
and vital touch with the people, and in the most real sense 
it reflects the common judgment. The voice of the 
people can easily make itself heard, and when heard it is 

likely to be heeded. 

In a monarchy or an aristocracy this is not by any, 
means the case. The throne is far removed from the 
people, and so many functionaries stand between sov- 
ereign and subjects, that an echo from the great world 
outside can hardly reach the throne room of the mon- 
arch. In a democracy, however, the people must be 
heard and heeded. As a rule, whatever can be shown to 
be advantageous to the people, is sure to be adopted 
sooner or later. Democracy provides an opportunity for 
the full and free discussion of platforms and programmes. 
By a process of natural selection the bad measures will 
finally be rejected and the good will be retained. 

It has been claimed, not without reason, that the demo- 
cratic State provides the best machinery for social prog- 
ress. Prof. N. P. Oilman, in a book of much insight, 
has shown that the democratic idea, as embodied in the 
American government, furnishes the best answer to the 
demands of the social radicals. Every advantage which 
the most ardent Socialist finds implied in socialism may 
be realized, and must be realized in a democracy when 
the people are ready to give such a scheme a chance to 
work. Thus, whatever advantage may accrue to society, 
will be secured through the intellectual growth of the 
people, coupled with their elevation in moral character. 
As it is not necessary to burn down the barn in order to 
get rid of the rats, so neither is it necessary to destroy 
the existing social system in order to secure any needed 
reform Names count for little ; whatever can be shown 



THE ADVANTAGES OF DEMOCRACY l8l 

to be advantageous to the higher and better interests of 
the people, be it sociahstic or individuahstic in spirit and 
form, is sure to be tried sooner or later in a democracy. 

The building of ideal commonwealths is an easy and 
delightful task, and such dreams have done much to 
show the way of human progress. But then theory must 
be supplemented by practical experience, and millenniums 
cannot be made to order. The dream of the most 
alluring Utopia must be submitted to the people for 
final adjudication. Before they leave the woes they have 
and fly to others they know not of, they must be per- 
suaded that the move will be advantageous all around. 
At any rate — and this is the point of the whole conten- 
tion — a democratic form of government furnishes an 
open field for the discussion of all social and political 
questions, and it is the guarantee that whatever com- 
mends itself to the informed and convinced judgment of 
the people will finally be adopted. 

2. The very idea of democracy means mutual aims and 
common responsibilities. In a democracy the men of 
culture and ideals are under bonds to take thought 
for the less cultured, and to put forth effort to help the 
laggards in the march. But a democracy not only lays 
this obligation upon men, but it also provides a free 
field for the trial of any experiments. We may be sure 
that, so long as there are men with large ideas and the 
social spirit, that long there will be proposed many plans 
to hasten the social progress. And so long as men are 
open to persuasion and are anxious to try new experi- 
ments, so long all kinds of social programmes will be 
tried. Thus a democracy makes constant demands upon 
the more progressive portion of the community to formu- 
late plans for social betterment. It comi)els men to sub- 
ject all these plans to the final test of their social effi- 
ciency. And so it is that democracy at once conserves 



l82 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

the good of the past, yet furnishes opportunity for wider 
good in the future and all this without revolution or 
bloodshed. 

There is a weapon swifter still. 

And surer than the bayonet, 
That executes a freeman's will 

As lightning does the will of God. 

3. There is one other advantage that may be men- 
tioned, and it is in a way significant of the whole demo- 
cratic movement. In a monarchy or an aristocracy, the 
ruling upper class is quite fixed and stable ; members are 
born into this class, and they take their place with no one 
to challenge their right. In such a society, also, the 
lower subject classes are no less fixed and permanent; 
the members of these classes may look upward with ad- 
miration upon their betters, but it seldom occurs to them 
to aspire to those heights of noble privilege. Thus such 
a society is usually quite peaceful and moves along with 
little friction between the classes. But in a democracy 
all this is changed. There is no hereditary class of rulers 
and nobles, but all belong to the common class of 
" people." And yet no society can long endure without 
rulers and leaders, and least of all can a democracy live 
without such. Every believer in democracy will agree 
with Mazzini that the ideal democracy is that in which 
we have a government of all the people under the guid- 
ance of the best and bravest. But how shall we find 
out who are the best and bravest people in the State, and 
give them the place that is theirs by natural right? A 
monarchy has its own method of selection, and this is in 
the main selection by the accident of birth and blood. A 
democracy has a different method of selection, and in 
the main this is selection by fitness and worth. In this 
process of selection great mistakes may be made, and 



THE ADVANTAGES OF DEMOCRACY 1 83 

there may be much confusion, but, after all, the results 
fully justify the process. A democracy that could bring 
Abraham Lincoln from the rail-splitter's cabin and seat 
him in the presidential chair will have no difficulty in 
justifying itself at the bar of history. 

And beyond all a democracy differs very widely from a 
monarchy, not only in its method of selection, but in its 
definition of the marks of fitness. From the point of 
view of nature and history fitness is not measured by 
such external and artificial signs as blood and culture, 
or even strength and self-assertiveness, for these are 
purely arbitrary and accidental signs, and count for little 
in the real progress of society. The marks of fitness in 
a truly human and moral society are rather such things 
as inner worth and social sympathy, nearness to the 
people, and appreciation of their needs. The democratic 
method of selecting leaders is quite as satisfactory as 
can be found at this stage of human progress. It may 
score some signal failures, but then it is pretty sure to 
score a lower percentage of failures than any other 
method yet devised. At any rate, poor old humanity, 
after the bitter experiences of the past, is not likely soon 
to repudiate this method in favor of either the mon- 
archical or the aristocratic method. The presidents of 
the United States, during the century and a quarter of 
its existence have not all possessed all the marks of 
greatness, but then these men will bear comparison with 
the hereditary monarchs of the world during the same 
period. 

In all our thought of the State it is important that we 
keep in mind one fact — that it exists for the sake of man, 
and not merely for itself. We may grant that in a de- 
mocracy there is much blundering on the part of the 
people, and government may at times be diverted from 
its true aims. But, after all, in a democracy there is the 



184 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

desire of the people to put their faith into practice, and to 
build up in the earth a human society which shall be the 
human realization of the divine ideal. Democracy may 
have its dangers and disadvantages, but it has its advan- 
tages that are most real and manifest, advantages at once 
personal, social, and political. 



IX 

THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 

DEMOCRACY is an accepted fact in many lands 
to-day, and a marked tendency in all lands. For 
good or for ill, for weal or for woe, the great nations are 
launching forth on the rising tide of popular government. 
It is too late in the day for men to debate whether or 
not democracy shall exist at all in the world. And it is 
perhaps too early for men to appraise this movement at 
its true value and forecast its future development. For 
the present it rather remains for them to understand this 
universal tendency, to emphasize its good features, and to 
eliminate its evil elements. 

As might be expected, opinion is divided with respect 
to this new phenomenon we call democracy. Some per- 
sons take a very gloomy view of the situation, and 
tremble for the future of the world. The full coming of 
democracy in their fears is equivalent to the return of 
chaos and old night. Others never tire of singing the 
praises of democracy, and look upon it as the one step 
preceding the millennium. The realization of the demo- 
cratic State is to their rosy hopes the kingdom of God 
come among men. These are extreme views, and by 
the nature of the case each ignores certain necessary 
features in the other. But all students and statesmen 
recognize in democracy a new and potent force which 
is destined in time to effect radical changes in the struc- 
ture of society and in men's views of life. And all stu- 
dents and statesmen who are not blinded l)y prejudice 
or fear, see also that there are both nrood and evil possi- 

i8s 



l86 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

bilities in this movement. The universal tendency is one 
thing, and some of the incidental results of that tendency 
are quite different things. The universal tendency, we 
may assume in view of what has been said in earlier 
chapters, is good and is part of the nature of things. The 
evil results that accompany it, and these evils as we shall 
see are neither few nor trifling, are the incidental results 
and grow out of the imperfect will of man. 

The consideration of the advantages of democracy 
must not blind us to perils, both great and grave. To say 
that democracy possesses more advantages than any 
other form of government is not enough. The world 
wants to know whether it possesses the means whereby 
man may attain the highest results in social and political 
development. We want to know whether democracy is the 
ideal form of government, or whether men must still look 
for another. For the presence of democracy by no means 
implies and guarantees the production of the best results 
in life or in society. In fact, democracy may easily be- 
come the curse of man, and instead of diffusing blessing, 
may become a blight. The experience of the past avails 
us little at this point, for democracy at best is a modern 
experiment. The fact is, popular government since its 
beginnings in the world has proved itself to be exceed- 
ingly fragile and uncertain, and the appeal to history is 
not reassuring. Thus, Aristotle, in his lost book on 
Republics, gave the history of two hundred and fifty 
attempts at popular government, and all were failures. 
Plato is distrustful of liberty, and declares that " while 
the Persians may lose their liberty in absolute slavery, 
we have lost it in absolute freedom" (''The Laws," 
Bk. II). In this experiment of popular government 
the people are launching forth upon an uncharted sea, 
in which no shoals are indicated on the maps and no 
danger buoys are set, and withal a sea whose shores are 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 1 87 

strewn with numerous wrecks. The perils of democracy 
are most real, and it is folly to ignore them; and it may 
be fatal to misread them. Some of these perils we now 
consider : 

I. The Peril of an Incompetent Citizenship. De- 
mocracy means the participation of all the people in the 
affairs of government. It implies the equality of all 
men before the law. It gives every man a voice in the 
choice of leaders, and the enactment of laws. And thus 
it implies the competency of all to play a part in 
the drama of progress. But one does not need any 
extended observation to discover that all men are not 
by any means equal in mental and moral endowment. 
He does not have to go very far before he finds that all 
men have neither the general nor the special fitness for 
good citizenship. He will find also that many men who 
possess these general and special qualifications are prac- 
tically disbarred from public life by causes which it is 
hard to overcome. And thus he is brought face to face 
with one of the gravest dangers that besets the demo- 
cratic State, a danger so grave as to imperil the very ex- 
periment itself. Two or three elements of this problem 
may be briefly noted. 

That all men as we find them in the most democratic 
State are not fully qualified for the privilege of citizen- 
ship is manifest. The number of illiterate persons in 
the American commonwealths is comparatively small. 
But the ability to read and write does not by any means 
imply the ability to understand the functions of govern- 
ment. Not only so, but one may possess a general educa- 
tion without having any of the special qualifications of 
citizenship. One may know much about the history of 
Rome and yet be grossly ignorant of the life of his own 
community. One may be well trained in science and 
literature without a trace of civic intelligence or public 



l88 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Spirit. The fact is, the number of people, even in the 
most advanced community who possess this civic intelU- 
gence and special training, is comparatively small. And 
this means that the number of persons who are qualified 
by education and training for the exercise of an intelli- 
gent citizenship is not large. 

Then, the conditions of modern life make heavy de- 
mands upon the time and strength of all the people. 
That we are living in a strenuous age, with many things 
to engage our interest and distract our attention, is con- 
fessed by all. But this stress and strain are felt most 
acutely by the more intelligent and competent portion of 
the community. The demands that are made upon the 
time and energy of the professional and business man are 
very heavy, and when these are satisfied there is little 
time or energy remaining for other matters. Thus the 
men who are best qualified both mentally and morally 
for the privileges of citizenship are the very men who 
find it difficult to fulfil these privileges. It is easy for 
one to denounce all this indifference of the people as 
treason against the State; and it is treason of the most 
subtle and fatal kind. For the most dangerous people in 
a democracy are not the anarchists who seek to over- 
throw all existing government, or the politicians who 
seek to use government for their own ends; they are 
rather the so-called good men who neglect their public 
duties because of their engrossment in private affairs, and 
will not take the time or the trouble to protest against 
wrong. 

It must be conceded that the average citizen does not 
possess either the training or the time to make a first- 
hand study of public questions. Nor does he possess 
either the time or the strength to play the part of a good 
citizen, and devote himself to the public good. The 
struggle for existence is so real to many people that it is 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 189 

all they can do — so they say — to manage their own 
affairs. It is quite possible that there are some false ex- 
cuses hidden in the common reasons; but none the less 
there is a difficulty here which no one can overlook. 
It is quite possible also that certain misconceptions of 
the Christian life are responsible for some of this indiffer- 
ence to political matters. Our citizenship is in heaven, 
men have said, and we cannot allow ourselves to be 
distracted by the politics of earth. Thus it has come 
about that many men, and these among the most earnest 
and conscientious, have looked forth upon the world of 
politics as upon an alien realm, and have had as little to 
do as possible with such secular matters. This means on 
the one side that the more conscientious men have ab- 
jured politics as an alien interest, and the more active 
politicians have abjured conscience as an alien factor. 
It is easy to see that the State must suffer under such 
conditions and, in fact, the State does suffer. 

II. The Danger of False Leadership. Akin to the 
danger just considered, in a way its corollary and in a 
sense its result, is another danger no less real — that 
of false leadership. Democracy means the rule of the 
people, but democracy does not mean the absence of all 
leadership. This is not all, but as society becomes more 
complex the problems of society become more intricate. 
And expert leadership is demanded for the comprehen- 
sion and interpretation of these problems. It is all very 
well to say — in a Fourth of July oration — that the people 
are sovereign and are all called to be leaders. But the 
hard fact remains that all the people are not qualified to 
lead, and not all have the sovereign's spirit. 

The truth is, democracy is impatient of leadership, and 
scouts the intimation that the people are not qualified 
to decide offhand all questions. Do not the people rule? 
And do not the people know? The many are ready 



190 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

to resent the insinuation that they do not know and 
are not quaHfied to lead. But now comes a difficulty that 
constitutes a real peril — the difficulty of obtaining this 
qualified leadership. 

In a democracy a qualified leadership is demanded, 
and if a true leadership is not found a false leader- 
ship is forthcoming. This false leadership manifests 
itself in two ways, in the demagogue and the boss. 

In his time Aristotle described the demagogue 
and analyzed the conditions which produced him, 
and his picture is as fresh as when first limned in 
old Athens. In every State there are always some 
men who are dissatisfied with the existing order of 
things, and eager for a change of some kind. Beyond 
the settled polity of the State there are many questions 
open to discussion and adjudication by the people. In 
every society, be it large or small, there are some men — ■ 
soldiers of fortune — watching for every opportunity of 
promoting their own interests and of winning a little 
renown. When true leaders are wanting — men who 
combine a knowledge of the past with a belief in prog- 
ress — false leaders are sure to arise — men whose only 
qualifications are a brazen effrontery and a bold self- 
assertiveness — who play the demagogue and appeal to the 
lowest motives of the people. They raise false issues and 
becloud the real issues. They appeal to passion and 
prejudice and sneer at higher motives. They make a 
god of expediency and look no farther than the present 
hour. They live by compromise and flout high ideals as 
idle dreams. Such men soon gather around themselves a 
group of disciples and claquers, ready to catch the nod 
and applaud every utterance. For men are like sheep, 
ever ready to follow a leader be he false or true; and 
men are like sheep in that they will follow a leader in a 
foolish as in a wise course. And lo, the demagogue ap- 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY I9I 

pears; and alas the people follow him; and unfortunately 
the State pays the forfeit. Aristotle's description of the 
demagogue is true to life; his fears of the demagogue 
are well founded, and his forecast of the results is fully 
reaHzed. What Aristotle so clearly foresaw is a real 
and serious danger in these modern times. A democracy 
without expert guides presents an open field for dema- 
gogues, and history shows that wherever the opportunity 
is offered and the conditions are favorable such phe- 
nomena have appeared. 

It is a far cry from Aristotle to our modern times, 
but the Stagirite's words are as significant to-day as 
when first written. All later students of democracy 
have had to deal with this phenomenon, and all have seen 
in it a grave danger. Thus Macaulay, in his celebrated 
letter on '* Democracy in America," clearly points out 
the peril. To entrust the supreme authority in the State 
to a majority of the voters, told by the head, was to en- 
trust it to the poorest and most ignorant portion of 
society. He declared his conviction that institutions 
purely democratic must sooner or later destroy liberty or 
civilization, or both. '' Distress everywhere makes the 
laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to 
listen with eagerness to agitators, who tell him that it is 
a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million 
while another cannot get a full meal." Government, 
under such conditions, would never be able to restrain 
the distressed and discontented majority; for in a democ- 
racy the majority are the government, and this majority 
have the minority absolutely at their mercy. The time 
will come when we shall see on one side '' a statesman 
preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict ob- 
servance of public faith; on the other, a demagogue 
ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, 
and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink 



192 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

champagne and to ride in a carriage while thousands of 
honest folks are in want of necessaries. Which of the 
two candidates," he asks, " is likely to be preferred 
by a workingman who hears his children cry for more 
bread?" (Macaulay, letter to H. S. Randall, 1857). 

The discovery of the men most fitted to lead is one 
of the most difficult problems of every society. Take 
two men and let them enter the race for public office.. 
One is a thinker and a statesman, who knows something 
of history and does not expect the millennium to be haled 
in by any legislation; a man who knows something of 
human nature and sees that there are no panaceas; one 
who takes a broad view of great questions and looks 
beyond the merely low self-interests involved and con- 
templates all questions in terms of the general welfare, 
and withal a man of real moral worth who respects him- 
self too highly to parade his own excellencies and to 
employ meretricious arguments. The other is a self- 
seeker and demagogue who, because he knows nothing 
of history, never raises a question concerning any of 
his grandiloquent schemes; one who ignores the general 
welfare and construes all questions in terms of personal 
interest, and withal a man of popular address, with the 
gift of pleasing the gallery gods, with that shallow logic 
that can make the worse appear the better reason. One 
needs little experience of actual life to guess which of 
the two men is more likely to please the multitude and 
secure their support at the polls. The science of poli- 
tics, it may be said, is something more than the Ignorance 
of science ; and the art of politics, it may also be said, is 
something better than skill in vote catching. 

Under this head of False Leadership is another danger, 
very much akin to the one just named, and no less 
serious than It. The demagogue and the boss together 
constitute two grave dangers that beset democracy. 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY I93 

In modern society the struggle for existence is keen, 
and few men have either the time or the strength for 
any interests off the hne of their necessary tasks. From 
one cause and another their time and attention are en- 
gaged elsewhere, and they have little strength for im- 
personal and pubhc questions. For this reason they are 
all too willing to delegate this work to the men who have 
the time for such matters and make a business of politics. 
In a democracy, government works through the party 
organization, and this is more or less inevitable and 
necessary. That there may be unity of effort and con- 
tinuity of purpose there must be a compact organization 
with its platforms and its managers. By an almost in- 
evitable gravitation the management of this party organi- 
zation falls more and more into the hands of a few men. 
And in the final result the party management usually 
narrows down to one man. These conditions, more or 
less natural, and yet more or less unforeseen, have pro- 
duced a profession whose only occupation is politics. 
Where the conditions are thus prepared in advance for 
the party leader and political manager, it would be 
strange indeed if this personage did not appear. 

There are, however, certain other influences and con- 
ditions which combine to give this manager added power, 
and then tempt him to its misuse. One is the selfish 
desire of men to gain power, either through the control 
of men or the possession of wealth. That this position 
as party manager or political boss gives men power is 
known to all. In many American cities and States there 
are such leaders and bosses who possess more absolute 
autocratic power than was ever enjoyed by any feudal 
baron or medieval king. That this position of leader 
or boss enables men to accumulate vast fortunes is also 
known to all. In these same cities and States there are 
many rich men, sometimes millionaires, whose only oc- 
N 



194 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

cupation for years has been politics. With two such 
powerful subjective motives at work it is not strange 
that some men should yield to the pressure and climb into 
the chair of political czardom. The other influences and 
conditions are found in the presence of great corpo- 
ration and special interests that have some franchise to 
seek or some favor to secure. These corporations and 
interests have found that pubhc franchises of one kind 
and another are priceless assets, and so they are inter- 
ested in securing these exclusive privileges for them- 
selves on the most advantageous terms. 

There are bosses in the cities and States of America 
who control the nominal officers, and determine what 
policies shall prevail and what franchises shall be granted. 
They dictate nominations and determine platforms ; they 
control legislation, and say what laws shall be enforced ; 
they set the keynote for the press and make and unmake 
candidates. There are bosses who are dictators and 
rulers in everything except name; and while the people 
go through the forms of ratifying the bosses' wishes the 
nominal officers of the State make effective the bosses' 
demands. These bosses, the feudal barons of the modern 
age, the virtual rulers of the people, lay heavy tribute 
upon society and distribute favors with a free hand ; they 
are the political middle men for the lawless and criminal 
classes, whether members of vice combinations or man- 
agers of grasping corporations. And they have ways of 
making their power felt in business and social circles. 
Sometimes brave men fear to arouse their enmity and 
good men hesitate to oppose their schemes. 

It is true that the people have the means in their own 
hands whereby all this, which is a travesty on true de- 
mocracy, may be ended. It is true also that now and 
again the people assert themselves and use these means. 
Now and again it happens that, stung to madness by 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY I95 

a long train of abuses pursuing invariably the same end, 
the people arise in their might and depose their tyrants. 
Sometimes the particular boss in power is driven from 
the throne forever, and sometimes he goes through the 
form of an abdication and bides his time. But the causes 
and conditions which produced the one, not being 
changed or removed, soon produce another and then the 
old system goes on its way pursuing the same methods 
and reaching the same results. In many cases it is found 
that nothing less than a moral earthquake is sufficient 
to dislodge the boss; and as such earthquakes cannot be 
produced every year, the tyrant's rule is practically un- 
broken. Democracy, in its actual working, may be 
described as boss rule tempered by the fear of revolt. 

And so pronounced and so persistent is the tendency 
to bossism that many thoughtful men are becoming 
distrustful of democracy. The people are not ready for 
free institutions, and they are too easily misled by dema- 
gogues. They must have leaders, and they will have 
leaders. The men who can rule are presumably the men 
most fitted to lead ; what is the use in having leaders who 
cannot rule? Thus Lord Macaulay's forecast seems only 
too truly to be fulfilling itself and democratic government 
is passing into eclipse. He was shrewd enough to see 
that for a long time to come the vast majority of the 
people would not be competent to pass an intelligent 
judgment on the great and intricate questions of public 
moment. He saw also that leadership was both neces- 
sary and inevitable, and that all too patiently the people 
would accept the self-appointed leadership of the strong 
man who came to the front. Thus all unconsciously the 
people would lose their democratic faith and spirit, and 
thus all unconsciously democratic government would 
become a mere name. 

All this brings before us one of those difficulties that 



196 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

is almost impassable. No government can long prosper 
without intelligent leadership, and least of all can a 
democracy. But as such leadership becomes more nec- 
essary its selection becomes more difficult. In every 
generation, as Carlyle reminds us, Providence sends the 
men who are the ordained leaders of their fellows. But 
how shall we discover these leaders? How shall we 
discern the true from the false? We cannot accept the. 
claims of every self-appointed leader, for such men are 
pretty sure to be demagogues or bosses. It is a day 
of ill omen for any nation when the best people eschew 
politics and refuse to seek public office. Government that 
means the reign of mediocrity and the rule of incom- 
petency cannot be pronounced a great success. But de- 
mocracy is exposed to danger at this point, and no one 
can bHnk this danger. This is one of the perils of 
democracy. 

III. The Abuse of the Party System. It is easy for 
one who is so disposed to frame an indictment against 
the entire system of political parties. For every intel- 
ligent man knows that political parties are often guilty 
of great abuses and commit gross tyrannies. But the 
wiser course is to understand the party system and then 
point out the dangers that result from its common abuse. 
It may be observed that what we call political parties are 
found only in free States. In an autocracy there may be 
various classes and factions more or less opposed to one 
another, and more or less compact ; these classes and fac- 
tions may possess a certain autonomy in action, and may 
wage a constant struggle for supremacy. But they are not 
political parties in the fullest sense of the term, and so 
they do not concern us here. The fact is, political parties 
exist only where there is a certain measure of political 
freedom on the part of the people. The presence of 
political parties in a State shows that the people are 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 1 97 

coming to political self-consciousness, that they are be- 
ginning to think on political questions and are beginning 
to trust one another; and even beyond this it shows that 
the people have some political judgments and are seeking 
to make their judgments effective. 

It has been pointed out by Lieber that not only are 
political parties possible in the free State, but they are 
always found in every such State. " I avow that, as far 
as my knowledge goes, I know of no instance of a free 
State without parties. . . At first sight it may seem 
otherwise, but I believe there never existed a free coun- 
try actively developing within its bOsom constitutional 
law, and feeling deeply interested in the great problems 
of right and public justice, in which there were not also 
parties " (Lieber, " Political Ethics," Vol. II, p. 254). In 
the free State where men have begun to have some voice 
in the affairs of government, they have begun to take some 
thought for the common good. When any great questions 
arise in political life, men take sides as by a kind of natural 
gravitation. Some men will be progressive and some 
conservative; some will fear centralization and others 
favor it; many will believe in tariffs, while others will 
oppose them; some will plead for a wider social control 
and some will fear it as a new slavery. It is natural 
and necessary for those who think alike on important 
political questions to seek one another out and form 
themselves into a party. Wherever there is free action 
of whatever sort, political, scientific, religious, social, 
and wherever men have some common ends in view and 
are interested in seeking those ends, there we find those 
who will unite in some degree and combine their efforts. 
Without such unions, as Lieber shows, it would be as 
impossible in many cases to remove some impediments in 
the course of civilization as without a union of forces 
it would be to remove some physical obstacle. 



198 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

And once more, not only is it natural for parties to 
exist in the free State, but it is desirable. The larger 
the State and the greater the number of citizens, the 
less individual action counts and the more concerted 
action weighs. It is only by collective action that the 
one man can make the most of himself. It is only 
by a kind of united voice that men can make themselves 
heard in the great mass. This is not all, for " without 
parties there could be no loyal, steady, lasting, and 
effective opposition, one of the surest safeguards of 
public peace" (Lieber, ibid., p. 254, 255). In the light 
of all the facts we may conclude that political parties 
are not only possible in the free State, but they are 
necessary and desirable. 

It must, however, be admitted that the party system 
is liable to great abuses, and political parties expose 
themselves and subject others to grave dangers. In 
fact, the abuses of the party system are so grievous 
and so common that the system itself may be considered 
as one of the serious dangers of the democratic State. 
Several of these are too patent and too potent to pass 
unnoticed. 

There is first of all the danger of faction and narrow- 
ness. A party represents a part, and not the whole; 
its members may believe most implicitly in its creed, but 
they do not profess to compass all truth. A party to 
maintain itself must build party fences, and it must have 
its platforms and its programmes. All this exposes men 
to the danger of narrowness. The man who builds a 
fence fences out a great deal more than he fences in. A 
party, by the nature of the case, is an opportunist; it 
cannot pretend to represent all issues and to push all re- 
forms. And in so doing it runs the danger of becoming 
exclusive and of building party fences. The issues it 
advocates are believed to be important, and all other 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 199 

issues are either non-existent or are wholly negligible. 
It follows that all who are found within a particular 
fold are regarded as being in the right, while all other 
people are flouted as being in the wrong. The party 
that makes its own success and honor the supreme con- 
cern has degenerated from a party into a faction. The 
fact that a thing is done solely for the sake of a party 
is a reason for not doing it at all. 

Akin to this, and growing out of it, is the danger of 
excessive party zeal. In his farewell address. President 
Washington, in prophetic words, confessed his solicitude 
for the future of his country, and one of the chief 
dangers that he foresaw was this very danger of the 
partisan spirit. Several counts in the indictment of the 
party system may be noted, for time has justified the 
fear of Washington. The unity of government he saw 
was necessary to the success of the democratic experi- 
ment ; " it is the main pillar in the edifice of real independ- 
ence; it is the support of your tranquillity at home and 
your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of 
that liberty which you so highly prize." The name 
American belongs to the people in their national ca- 
pacity, and it must always exalt the just pride of 
patriotism more than any appellation derived from local 
discriminations. Since this is so, nothing could be more 
unfortunate and calamitous than for the people to divide 
along the lines of section or of class. To do this is to be 
faithless to the common good and to jeopardize the very 
republic itself. United the people stand, but divided they 
must fall. 

Through excessive zeal for party the party out of power 
for the time takes up the attitude of opposition to the 
party in power, and does everything possible to discount 
and hinder it. This opposition party seeks to make the 
government as inefficient as possible, and blocks the 



200 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

way for much remedial legislation. When any important 
measure is brought forward, its probable effect upon 
the party's success is the first consideration. Of course, 
there are times when men forget that they are partisans 
and remember that they are citizens, but too often men 
are partisans first and citizens afterward. In view of 
the marked and manifest tendencies of the party spirit 
to run to excess, an effort should be made by force of 
public opinion to mitigate and assuage it. " A fire not 
to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to pre- 
vent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it 
should consume." 

The other danger that may be mentioned is what may 
be called the tyranny of party, and this is one of the 
most flagrant abuses conceivable. Self-preservation, ac- 
cording to the party creed, is the first law of life. Regu- 
larity and obedience are the chief virtues, while inde- 
pendence and unsubmissiveness are the fatal vices. Men 
are discouraged to think for themselves, and are bidden 
to think within the circle of the party's creed. Men who 
will not accept this dictation are regarded with sus- 
picion, and are often made to feel the heavy hand of the 
party's displeasure. There are communities in America 
where political independence is almost equivalent to 
commercial suicide. The average newspaper is more or 
less the organ of a political party, and all goes well with 
that paper so long as its editor is regular and submissive. 
But everything goes ill the moment it shows any inde- 
pendence. The public printing is a big item, and since 
the party managers control the government, the favors 
of the government go to the men who are in the favor 
of the party. Then the government has a financial side, 
and thus comes into close contact with the banks of the 
State. This public business is a valuable item to many 
bankers, and this gives the party managers a means of 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 201 

control that is most subtle and yet most potent. In some 
of the American States this party control is most rigid; 
so rigid in fact that the official in any bank who is 
politically insubordinate may endanger the very pros- 
perity of the bank itself. In actual working the party 
machine is a kind of political inquisition for suppressing 
independence of thought and for preserving a peaceful 
uniformity. 

From one cause and another it has come about that the 
party system has imperiled democratic government and 
nullified its essential principles. In the most democratic 
lands the party system is most developed, and everywhere 
its pernicious influence is felt. For a century and more 
the government in America has been little else than a 
government by party; and while democracy in America 
has not by any means failed, it has not yet fully suc- 
ceeded. Through the excesses of the party spirit, class 
has been pitted against class and section has been arrayed 
against section. Because of this system of government 
by party representatives, government has not had its 
perfect working, and men have become distrustful of 
their legislatures. De Laveleye has said that the parlia- 
mentary system is working defectively everywhere ; and 
more than once, as we know, there have been deadlocks 
in Congress and in legislatures that have been little else 
than national scandals. 

IV. The Tyranny of the Multitude. Democracy has 
often been called government by public opinion, and 
in a way the title is an accurate description. Public 
opinion in a democracy decides many issues, and law 
itself is little else than such opinion formulated. What 
then is this public opinion, and what are its effects? 

In a letter written in 1820, Sir Robert Peel speaks in 
a doubtful way of " that great compound of folly, weak- 
ness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, 



202 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

and newspaper paragraphs, which is called public opin- 
ion " (Quoted by Bryce, '' American Commonwealth," 
Vol II, p. 217). The formation of this public opinion 
is so well described by James Bryce in his great study 
that one need do little more than merely summarize his 
argument. All the time in a free State public questions 
are coming into notice as part and parcel of the natural 
order of things. Through the newspapers, in the news 
columns, and in the editorial pages, these things are dis- 
cussed, and certain opinions are expressed. Back and 
forth these questions are debated in the newspapers and 
by the citizens generally, and in course of time men come 
to some more or less definite conclusions with respect 
to these issues. But since men are in the habit of view- 
ing all things in the light of their previous opinions, it 
follows that their conclusions with respect to these ques- 
tions are determined, often unconsciously enough, by 
their present views and their party affiliations. Thus 
men's conclusions arrange themselves into groups and 
circles in pretty close agreement with their party doc- 
trines and their settled views. Last of all we come to the 
stage of action when men are called to put their opinions 
into votes and crystallize them in public policies. But 
the average man is a member of a party, and being such, 
he falls in with his party's platform and stifles any doubt 
or repulsions he may feel. This platform, it may be said, 
represents the resultant opinion, and from it all indi- 
vidual opinion has been rigidly excluded. The men 
whose opinions are thus formed are then taken to the 
polls, and " Bringing men up to the polls is like passing 
a steam roller over stones newly laid on a road; the 
angularities are pressed down, and an appearance of 
smoothness and even uniformity is given which did not 
exist before. When a man has voted, he is committed; 
he has therefore an interest in backing the view which 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 203 

he has sought to make prevail. Moreover, opinion, 
which may have been manifold till the polling, is there- 
after generally twofold only. There is a view which 
has triumphed, and a view which has been vanquished " 
(Bryce, i^fc/., p. 211). 

On the surface this process seems natural and harmless 
enough, but it has another side which is less innocent and 
auspicious. In fact, in this whole process, both in its 
methods and its results, there are dangers that are most 
subtle and serious ; in fact, they are dangers that threaten 
the higher life of the people and make democracy little 
else than a name. The forms of liberty may not by any 
means insure the essence of liberty ; government by pub- 
lic opinion may easily mean the suppression of each man's 
higher personality, and the policies made by public opinion 
may be a kind of Procrustes' bed that seeks to reduce all 
men to the same stature. Careful thinkers in political 
science have seen this danger and have expressed their 
fears in no uncertain way. There are several angles at 
which this tyranny of the multitude may affect men. 

For one thing the fear of the multitude may so affect 
men in public office as to destroy their own initiative. 
According to the theory of representative government, 
men are chosen to public office that they may represent 
the people and may take thought for the common welfare. 
These men are representatives, it is true, but they are also 
men, and are supposed always to use their own best 
judgment in the determination of all policies. These 
men are to act as experts, to consider all questions in 
the light of truth, and then to frame their conclusions 
into statutes. But, as every one knows who is at 
all acquainted with the tendencies in democratic lands, 
representative government is breaking down at this point, 
and the representative is dwindling from a human repre- 
sentative into an impersonal agent. In practically every 



204 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

case he is nominated and elected as the exponent of his 
party, and he is supposed to have just one mission, and 
that the execution of the party's will. To be nominated 
and elected he must often suppress his own convictions 
and must voice the party's opinion; in fact, the average 
candidate finds that strong convictions are a handicap, and 
mediocre views are most acceptable. It is easy to see 
that under such conditions honest convictions are at a 
discount, expert knowledge receives scant consideration, 
and men who should be brave and far-sighted leaders be- 
come timid and abject followers. There are many ways 
in which man may be enchained, as there are many 
ways in which his manhood may be dishonored. There 
are chains for the body and there are fetters for the 
mind, and while the latter may be less heavy than the 
former, they may be even more tyrannous. The fear 
of the tyrant's whip may be dreadful enough, but the 
fear of the mob's frown may be more dreadful still. 
Just here we see one of the most subtle dangers of 
democracy. 

In his splendid plea for liberty John Stuart Mill ex- 
pressed the fear that democracy may come to mean the 
suppression of the finer and higher qualities of mankind. 
The will of the people may not mean self-government by 
each for the sake of all, but it may mean the government 
of each by all the rest. " The will of the people, more- 
over, practically means the will of the most numerous 
or the most active part of the people; the majority, 
or those who succeed in making themselves accepted 
as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire 
to oppress a part of their number, and precautions 
are as much needed against this as against any 
other abuse of power" (Mill, "On Liberty," Introduc- 
tory). This tyranny of the majority may operate 
through public authorities, but it is not by any means 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 205 

confined to such means. Society has its own ways of 
executing its mandates, and " if it issues wrong mandates 
instead of right or any mandates at all in things with 
which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny 
more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, 
since though not usually upheld by such extreme penal- 
ties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much 
more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the 
soul itself." 

This is not all, but in a democracy where the will of 
the people decides all issues there is a temptation to 
make the voice of the majority the arbiter of all ques- 
tions and the master of all consciences. The person is 
made to believe that what the majority wills is legal, 
and he is tempted to believe that it is also right and its 
decision is the end of all controversy. Thus the one 
man is made distrustful of his own thought and is con- 
strained to accept the common opinion as final truth. 
This begets in the individual a sense of helplessness. 
Feeling his isolation, the man is tempted to abandon his 
cause as hopeless and submit quietly to the dictum of 
the majority. He may be persuaded that he is right 
and the majority are wrong, but the fatalistic idea that 
the majority makes right and hence cannot be withstood, 
proves too strong, and he drifts with the crowd. He is 
but one among ten million, a drop in the ocean, a mote 
in the breeze ; and at best his influence is small, though 
his horizon may be wide. After all what can one man 
do? There is thus a pressure upon the individual to 
yield to the decree of fate — the decision of the majority — 
and either abandon his convictions or hold them as a 
purely personal matter — which is the usual course. 

But this is not all, for in a democracy men work on 
the assumption that what the majority decrees is right 
and must be obeyed. The majority may so believe in its 



206 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

power and in its right to do as it pleases as to ignore the 
rights of the minority and to tyrannize over them. The 
sovereign people may become the worst kind of a tyrant. 
The majority may ride rough-shod over the minority, 
and may traverse some of their most sacred rights. The 
voice of the people may decide the fate of a man or 
an issue, but the voice of the people may not always 
be the voice of God. The decree of the multitude that 
does not represent the reasoned judgment and rational 
will of men may be as tyrannical and brutal as the 
arbitrary preference and irrational will of the most irre- 
sponsible autocrat. Numbers do not make right, though 
democracies are prone to this belief. The fact is, minor- 
ities have rights which must be considered and conserved 
no less than those of the majority. Wendell PhilHps has 
declared in vigorous language that the State which does 
not protect the weakest and lowliest member against the 
assumptions and aggressions of the many and the strong 
is no better than a gang of robbers. The one great end 
of government is the protection of the weak against the 
strong, and the government that fails here fails in its 
first function. Governments, whether monarchical or 
democratic, become a plague and a curse when they 
override the person of any and sacrifice the rights and 
sanctities of the minorities to the wishes or the interests 
of the majority. 

There is a still lower and more brutal form of this 
tyranny of the multitude that is seen in what may be 
called the mob mind. This phenomenon has been so well 
described by my friend, Prof. E. A. Ross, that I summa- 
rize his argument. " In observing social life among 
animals one is struck by the contagion of feeling in a 
herd or flock. Whatever the feeling called up, whether 
terror, hostility to a stranger, rage at hereditary enemies, 
or sympathy for a stricken fellow, all the members of the 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 207 

group feel it, and feel it at once. . . The human analogue 
to the agitated herd is the mob." And the human ana- 
logue to this contagion of feeling in the flock is what 
may be called the mob mind. '' For purposes of social 
psychology a mob may be defined as a ' crowd of people 
showing a unanimity due to mental contagion.' " Ana- 
lyzing the characteristics of this mob we find that it 
shows a one-mindedness, the result not of reasoning or 
discussion or coming together of the like-minded, but of 
imitation. That it is excited goes almost without saying, 
and that it is both fickle and irrational naturally follows. 
In this mob the mass is all potent and the individual con- 
tracts to a mere point of contagion, and all that he can 
do is to go with the crowd and add to its momentum. 
Changing the figure we may say that the leader is like 
the bellweather of the flock : when he stamps and shows 
excitement the flock does the same ; when he runs and 
leaps at something or nothing every sheep follows. (Ross, 
''The Foundations of Sociology," chap. v). 

There are certain tendencies and conditions in modern 
society which expose government to dangers from this 
mob mind. One is the marked drift cityward, which is 
so characteristic of recent times. This massing of men in 
cities has a peculiar danger for democracy in that it has 
a peculiar tendency to develop the mob mind. In the city 
people are brought close together, and where elbows 
touch heat is soon generated. Then the intense life of 
the city tends to produce nervous disorders, the peculiar 
malady of city dwellers. All this furnishes the very con- 
ditions that produce all the qualities of the mob mind. 
" In fact, if we translate these qualities into public policy, 
we have the chief counts in the indictment which historians 
have drawn against the city democracies of old Greece, 
and medieval Italy" (Ross, ibid., p. to6). 

The other condition that may be named as exposing 



208 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

government to danger at this point is the possession of 
the franchise by the least intelHgent portion of the 
people. All students of political history have recog- 
nized a distinction between true and false democracy, 
and the distinction is a vital one. The true democ- 
racy really represents the people, but it recognizes that 
there are other elements than numbers alone. It 
is true democracy because it recognizes the natural in-J 
equalities of men and accords to worth its natural leader- 
ship in the State. The false democracy with its equal 
voting, we are warned is in principle wrong, and 
it has dangers which cannot be minimized. There is 
grave danger to the State when government is exposed 
to the caprice and contagion of the least intelligent but 
most numerous portion of the community. There is a se- 
rious menace to real democracy when the people most sub- 
ject to the sway of the mob mind exist in great number. 
Thus Professor von Seybel, in his " History of the 
Revolutionary Period," is well warranted in his distrust 
of the Rousseau theory, which is incarnate in false 
democracy, and which " raises to the throne, not the 
reason which is common to all men, but the aggregate 
of universal passions." 

These dangers in their various forms of manifestation 
are most real and subtle, and their menace to the very 
idea and ideal of democracy can hardly be exaggerated. 
In a society where the political temper prevails and 
opinions are settled by a show of hands, a continual pres- 
sure of temptation is upon men. In such a society the 
suppression of one's true opinions and the profession of 
the popular false opinion is hardly counted a vice at all ; 
not seldom, indeed, it passes for solid wisdom and high 
virtue. The art of politics, which is one of the highest 
of all arts when honestly pursued, but the meanest of 
all arts when selfishly perverted, is thus in danger of 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 209 

becoming one of the meanest and most unworthy. In a 
society where the political temper prevails it is so easy to 
go with the crowd and accept the verdict of the majority 
as the final word. In such a society " thoroughness is 
a mistake, and nailing your flag to the mast a bit of de- 
lusive heroics. Think wholly of the day and not at all 
of to-morrow. Beware the high and hold fast to the safe. 
Dismiss conviction and study general consensus. No 
zeal, no faith, no intellectual trenchancy, but as much low- 
minded geniality and trivial complaisance as you please " 
(Morley, "On Compromise," p. 21). It is always very 
difficult, and often it is dangerous to rise above the dust 
of the caravan and direct one's course by the unchanging 
stars ; and it is sometimes doubly difficult and dangerous 
in a democratic society. It requires nothing less than a 
superb moral courage for a man to be loyal to his best 
ideals and to speak his own convictions ; for it is so easy 
and often so popular to go with the crowd and shout the 
com.mon faith. And such moral courage is especially 
needed in a democratic government; for without such 
superb courage the unpopular protest may not be spoken 
and the new ideal may not be uplifted. 

It is needless, perhaps, to say that in speaking in this 
way of the dangers of democracy we are not by any 
means distrustful of the democracy itself, and have no 
desire to exchange it for some other form of government. 
The fact is, if such an exchange were even contemplated 
one does not know what form of government he could 
possibly choose in preference. And yet it may be well 
for us to consider these dangers of democracy, that we 
may be on our guard against them. It is but fair that in 
a discussion of democracy its perils and disadvantages 
should be set side by side with some of its advantages 
and blessings. For the forms of liberty may not by any 
means guarantee the essence of liberty ; the tyranny of the 
o 



210 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

many may be but the tyranny of one writ large. Under 
the appeals of the demagogue and the sway of passion the 
people may be aroused to action, and a majority may easily 
be found in favor of certain proposed measures ; and thus 
government may utterly fail to protect the one against 
the many, and to guarantee to each citizen the full exer- 
cise of his rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, 
and the privilege of thought. 

V. A False Conception of the State. A danger more 
real and more subtle than any thus far considered is the 
danger that grows out of a false conception of the. State 
itself. That is, in a democratic State, there is a danger 
lest the State be regarded as a mere human contrivance, 
to be honored when it serves men's purposes and to be 
set aside when it does not suit their wishes. And there 
is a danger lest law, which represents the will of the 
majority, shall lose all high meaning and majesty and 
shall become the mere plaything of opposing interests. 

The social contract theory of the State has played a large 
part in the political thinking of the last century and a half, 
and its course is not by any means fully run. This theory 
teaches that the individual is by nature free and inde- 
pendent, possessed of rights which are older than society 
and anterior to government. By his own voluntary con- 
sent this man contracts himself out of this condition of 
freedom into political relations, and this compact of the 
original members must be renewed from generation to 
generation. The government that is created possesses 
no higher validity and authority than this social compact ; 
it exists for the sake of individuals, and they who create 
the government and make its laws, can unmake the State 
and repeal its laws. In theory this means that the people 
are the source of law, and whatever the people decide is 
both legal and right. "Political philosophy," said M. 
Gambetta, in a famous speech, " demands that the people 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 211 

be considered as the exclusive, the perennial source of all 
powers, of all rights. The will of the people must have 
the last word. All must bow before it." This doctrine, 
that the evershifting will of the masses is the very source 
and fount of right, of law, of justice, is the expression 
in the public order of the agnostic theory of the State. 
Napoleon was but voicing this theory in his own way 
when he declared : " With the armies of France at my 
back I shall always be in the right.'' 

The social contract theory of the State has been 
abandoned by every political thinker of any note. But, 
though utterly discounted by philosophers, it is the prac- 
tical working principle in the political life of many na- 
tions. The political faith of democratic nations teaches 
that what the majority wills is right; that right and wrong 
are determined by counting ballots ; that government is 
here to serve the interests of its individual members, and 
that each man is free to use government in whatever 
way will best serve his own personal interests. The 
people have repudiated the idea of a Lawmaker, whose 
will is supreme; they have denied the old fiction of the 
divine right of kings ; they have cast off all human head- 
ship over the State and have assumed the sovereignty 
themselves. The throne, the scepter, the crown have been 
swept away, and the people have declared that they are 
the exclusive and perennial source of all powers and all 
rights. 

This theory, though discounted in theory and followed 
in practice, is most baleful in its effects and most danger- 
ous to the State. For one thing, the effect of this theory 
m practice is to derationalize, to demoralize, to dissolve, 
and to destroy society itself. " It derationalizes, for it is 
fatal to the belief that reason pervades the universe; 
reason means something self-identical and independent.' 
It demoralizes, for morality if not absolute, is nothing. 



212 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

It dissolves, for the bonds of society are ethical. It 
destroys, for if those bonds are loosed fal the social 
system must" (Lilly, "The Ethics of Politics, ^^ The 
Forum," June, 1889). "For practical purposes says 
Bluntschli, " this doctrine is in the highest degree danger- 
ous, since it makes the State and its institutions the 
product of individual caprice, ^nd declares it to be 
changeable according to the will of the individuals then 
livine It is to be considered, therefore, a theory of 
anarchy, rather than a political doctrine " (" The Theory 
of the State," Bk. IV, chap. ix). And another acute 
thinker has said: "The modern State is founded on 
the philosophy of atomism. Nationality, public spin , 
tradition, national manners, disappear like so many hol- 
low and worn-out entities ; nothing remains to create 
movement but the action of molecular forces and of dead 
weight. In such a theory liberty is identified with caprice 
and the collective reason and age-long tradition of an old 
society are nothing more than soap bubbles which the 
smallest urchin may shiver with a snap of the fingers 
(Amiel, "Journal," March 20, 1865). No wonder that 
Carlyle should call all this a doctrine of atheism, and 
should fear it for its practical effects. . 

To-day the democratic State is most seriously threat- 
ened by this agnostic theory of the State. This theory 
has done much to mislead the minds of men, and it is 
doing much to-day to undermine the whole meaning of 
law In this theory right and wrong are the product of 
ballot boxes. Civil law is the generalization of experi- 
ence and the will of the majority. Right is the bal- 
ancing of expediencies and the compromise of inter- 
ests Now right and wrong, it is perhaps needless to say, 
cannot be created in any ballot boxes. Woe unto that 
people who have no infinite standard of right. Woe to 
that people who regard law as the mere will of the ma- 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 2I3 

jority. Woe to that people who see behind the officer 
of State no higher authority than a written statute. Such 
a people are on the high road to political corruption and 
tyranny; worse still, they are drifting on the rocks of 
anarchy and chaos. To regard law in this low way, to see 
back of the civil statute nothing but the interests of a 
class or the will of the majority — than this nothing can 
be more ominous to the eye of truth or more oifensive 
to heaven. If men are free to make what laws they please, 
why may they not be free to break what laws they do not 
like? Thus the democratic State is being undermined in 
its very foundations, and the very life of the State is 
endangered. 

In view of all this it may be well to heed the admonition 
of Carlyle, and remind ourselves that there is an eternal 
and divine regulation of the universe, and our safety con- 
sists in our harmony with the nature of things. " A divine 
message or regulation of the universe, there verily is, in 
regard to every conceivable procedure of man ; faithfully 
following this, said procedure or affair will prosper, and 
have the full universe to second it, and carry it across the 
fluctuating contradictions, toward a victorious goal ; not 
following this, mistaking this, disregarding this, destruc- 
tion and wreck are certain for every affair." " How find 
this divine message of regulation ? " he asks. And all the 
world answers : " Count heads, ask universal suffrage ; 
that will tell." No wonder he grows scornful at this way 
of attempting to read the will of God. To make the 
will of the majority binding upon all or upon any is 
tyranny. Man as man has no claim upon my will ; not one 
man, not ten million of men. The only submission we 
dare acknowledge is submission to the law of right and 
the acceptance of its obligations. 

To-day this agnostic theory of the State in its practical 
workings is doing much to undermine men's respect for 



214 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

law. Let any plain citizen consider the manner in which 
the majority of laws are framed in a democracy and the 
result will not prove edifying. Many people see in the laws 
of the State little else than the intrigues of politicians 
and the interests of a class. Many men have gone be- 
hind the scenes, and they know how laws are framed in 
caucus and lobbied through the legislature. It is not 
difficult to see why men have such little respect for the 
laws of the land. It is not easy to see how laws framed 
in this way can command much reverence or speak with 
a divine authority. In this way men are indifferent to 
law because they have no respect for law. How much 
higher and worthier is the conception of the master 
of modern law : 

" For as God, when he created matter and endued it 
with the principle of mobility, established certain rules for 
the perpetual direction of that motion; so when he cre- 
ated man and endued him with free will to conduct him- 
self in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable 
laws of human nature whereby that free will is in some 
degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the 
faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws. . . 
These are the eternal and immutable laws of good and 
evil, to which the Creator himself, in all his dispensations 
conforms, and which he has enabled human reason to 
discover, so far as they are necessary for the conduct of 
human action" (Blackstone, " Cooley," Vol. I, Marg., 

40). 

Carlyle has told us that democracy is near akm to 
atheism, and we now see that it is near akin to anarchy. 
It is a day of ill omen for any State when self-interest is 
the lord of life and expedience is the god of conscience. 
It is a day of ill omen for a people when the will of the 
majority is made the standard of right and there is no 
vox Dei behind the vox populi. Democracy is organized 



THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY 215 

self-control ; and " It is evident that self-control means 
conscience and honor. And it is these qualities which a 
democracy preeminently needs. Here is the lack of our 
age. Democracy means individualism. And that has 
too fatefully come to mean yielding to the individual 
desire. It is what I want — or what I think I want — not 
what I ought, which determines my action (President 
Harry Pratt Judson, in '' American Journal of Sociology," 
July, 1895). Just so far as democracy means the en- 
thronement of self-interest and the apotheosis of indi- 
vidual desire; just so far as it means the dominance of 
human wishes without respect to the immutable laws of 
right, so far it becomes an iniquitous and dangerous thing, 
a thing with which the throne of God can have no fellow- 
ship, and a thing that can have no potent influence upon 
the real progress of man. 



X 

THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 

IN Western lands, democracy as a form of government 
is fast becoming a reality. In America and Switzer- 
land, in Britain and New Zealand, the hindrances that im- 
peded man's progress one by one have been swept away, 
and democracy is in fact now beginning to appear. In 
other lands there is such a pronounced drift toward 
democracy that government of the people is only a ques- 
tion of time. In past generations men dreamed of the 
blessings which we now enjoy, but died without entering 
the promised land. Now, after the long and weary 
wilderness march, we seem at last to have entered into 
our promised inheritance. Now, at last, the rights of the 
people have been so asserted and defined that the liberties 
which the men of old saw in a far-off vision have become 
the common heritage of their children. It seems that 
humanity is ready to turn the page and write a new 
chapter of human progress. 

But now what do we find ? How shall this new chapter 
be written ? Has the political millennium come, and are 
the people satisfied? Is democracy an accomplished fact? 
On all sides and by all classes of people it is discounted, 
and men are distrustful of popular government. Thus, 
a well-known writer, in a well-known review, declares 
that our age is befooled by democracy; and he further 
says that if we could get rid of our notions about liberty 
and equality, and could lay aside this eighteenth century 
philosophy, according to which human society is to be 
brought into a state of blessedness, we might get some 
216 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 217 

insight into the might of the societary organization. And 
Professor Giddings, one of the best informed sociologists, 
writes : " We are witnessing to-day beyond question, the 
decay — perhaps not permanent — but at any rate the decay 
of repubhcan institutions. No man in his right mind 
can deny it." And still another man, a careful student 
of history, writes a book on democracy and liberty, in 
which we have one long indictment of our modern demo- 
cratic institutions. 

That such things are thought and written, and are justi- 
fied by facts, indicates that democracy has not yet had 
its perfect work; at any rate they compel one to believe 
that it has some great tasks yet to fulfil. Some of these 
unfinished tasks we may briefly note. 

I. The Yea and Nay of Liberty. The story of liberty 
is one of the most glorious and fascinating stories in all 
the world. That men might be free they have counted 
not their lives dear unto themselves. That they might be 
free they have crossed trackless deserts and stormy 
oceans, preferring thirst and starvation to servile sub- 
jection. And their faith and toil have not been in vain, 
for one by one the limitations upon men have been re- 
moved, and little by little the soul has gained its freedom 
and stood in its own right. 

But the enjoyment of these privileges has not by any 
means solved the problems of society or brought the 
golden age of man. In fact, we are distinctly told that the 
very possession of these privileges has complicated the 
problems and has multiplied the dangers that beset our 
humanity. The story of liberty thus far written reads like 
an unfinished tale, and we turn to the next chapter. 

When we review this story of the struggle for liberty 
we see that it is almost wholly a story of negatives. Thus, 
two of the great charters of human liberty, the Magna 
Charta and the American Declaration of Independence, 



2i8 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

are both negative in form, and assert the right of man 
to be free from certain arbitrary and unjust exactions. 
Thus too, nearly all the great formulas of liberty that 
have been written have largely been negative in form and 
substance. No king or noble can extract arbitrary sums 
from the people under the name of taxes. No man can 
produce a bill of sale and claim another as his chattel. 
No man shall be deprived of the privileges of citizenship 
on account of the color of his skin or his status in 
society. No measures shall become law without the ex- 
pressed approval of a majority of the free electors. Sup- 
pose now we stop here as many seem inclined to do? 
Suppose this were the final word in the story of human 
liberty? In that case we fall far short of the goal, and 
misplace the whole emphasis of life. No man may dictate 
my religious belief. Does this mean that I am therefore 
absolved from all the obligations and claims of religion ; 
that religion is a matter of pure indifference to the State, 
and that the State can prosper where the people are 
irreligious? Many people so interpret the formula, and 
so they claim what BrOwnson calls the freedom of denial 
rather than the freedom of worship. No king or parha- 
ment may use my person and property for his own ad- 
vantage and according to his own pleasure. Does this 
mean that my own interests are supreme and that the 
State has no claims upon my life but such as I am wilhng 
to concede ? Does this mean that I am free to direct my 
life in my own way? Many people so suppose, and in 
doing so they pervert the whole meaning of liberty and 
misplace the emphasis of thought. Thus far we see that 
in the history of humanity liberty has appeared as a neg- 
ative thing in form and spirit. Thus far liberty has 
appeared as the deliverance of man from the tyranny of 
unjust and arbitrary restraint that he might be free to 
pursue his own way in peace and happiness. All this is 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCIL\CY 2ig 

something, but all this is not.all. If we stopped here we 
should fall far short of the full-orbed truth. 

For true liberty is a positive thing, and to consider its 
negative aspects alone is to miss its high and divine 
significance. The Apostle Paul — to take an illustration 
from religious history — makes it very clear that Jesus 
Christ has come to emancipate men from the bondage of 
a sacrificial and ceremonial system which pressed hard 
upon them. But he makes it no less clear that this eman- 
cipation does not absolve them from all moral and re- 
ligious obHgations; on the contrary, he means the direct 
opposite of this, and he declares that all this is simply to 
abuse the grace of God. By freedom, the apostle means 
that man is placed in a position where he may truly and 
fully serve God out of his own heart's choice and devo- 
tion. He is freed from the external and arbitrary re- 
straints that were upon him that he may serve God in 
sincerity and truth. By political freedom we do not 
mean that each man is freed from all law and authority 
that he may do what is right in his own eyes. The direct 
opposite is the fact, for democracy means not less law but 
more, but with this difference : the man is delivered from 
the tyranny of one man's will that he may order his life 
according to the authority of law and reason. The man 
is not free to do his own will and follow his own devices; 
nay, he is less free than before. But now his submission 
is wholly voluntary and spontaneous, and is the un- 
forced and genuine expression of his own heart's love 
and loyalty. 

Again, true liberty means the voluntary sacrifice 
of self for the common life. In the last analysis 
a man's conception of liberty is part and parcel of 
his total conception of man and his meaning. The 
man who makes self the center of his system and 
interprets all things in term of self-interest will be 



220 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

a tyrant when he has the power, and an anarchist 
when he is in subjection. But the man who beUeves in 
the soUdarity of the race and reaUzes that all are for each 
and each is for all, will construe all things in the light of 
the common good. To him government represents the 
common welfare, and the object of government is to dis- 
cover and administer that law which shall decide all 
questions between man and man. The man who has 
entered into the true and Christian conception of life 
sees that he is called to seek the good of others in the 
confidence that his own good will be secured. The Chris- 
tian law pledges each man to seek his own Hfe in and 
through the life of all. Liberty, it is evident does not 
mean the deliverance of the soul from law; it does not 
mean the privilege of making self the center ; above all 
it does not mean self-sufficiency and self-assertion. 
Liberty, in its inner meaning, is rather the privilege of 
choosing the right and of voluntarily submitting one's 
self to the common good ; it is the power of sacrificing 
self without constraint for the common hfe. The highest 
expression of liberty is found wherever " the strong yield 
up a measure of personal liberty for the sake of those 
to whom such liberty is full of irresistible peril " (" The 
Outlook," Aug. 31, 1907). The State, in the last analysis, 
is the medium of the mutual sacrifices and services of 
the people, and no society can exist without a degree of 
self-sacrifice and social service. The free State is pos- 
sible where the citizens take thought for the common 
welfare, and freely sacrifice themselves for the common 
good. Thus true liberty is life in and through the life 

of all. 

True liberty is not an end in itself, but a means to an 
end. That end is the fulfilment of one's personality and 
the welfare of all. John Stuart Mill has defined liberty 
as the power of pursuing one's own way, with the limi- 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 221 

tation that in so doing he is not to interfere with others 
who may be pursuing their own good in their own way. 
But this is an entirely negative conception, and neither 
satisfies the moral law nor solves the problems of society. 
In general, the formula means getting all you can of the 
world's goods without getting yourself into the police 
court. This really makes self the center, and puts the 
emphasis upon one's own wishes. And this also makes 
liberty an end in itself, and gives us no great synthesis 
which shall include all lesser ends. But the man who has 
entered into the true conception of things sees that he is 
called to seek the good of all in the assurance that his own 
good will thereby be secured. And he also sees that lib- 
erty, to have any real meaning and social value, signifies 
the power of choosing the highest ends and of making 
his life a part of the common life. 

Hence it follows that democracy will not fulfil its task 
till it has taught men the full meaning of liberty and has 
trained them in the art of living together. It is the 
recognition of the fact that all men are brothers, with 
common interests, common rights, and common duties. 
Liberty, on its negative side, means deliverance from ar- 
bitrary and external rule. Liberty in its positive aspect 
means the voluntary submission to law, with voluntary 
self-sacrifice for the common good. It is just here that 
we discover a danger that is as real in a democracy as in 
an autocracy. In a monarchy the world has often beheld 
the spectacle of one man making himself supreme and 
compelling the service and obedience of his fellows. And 
in a democracy we may behold the same spectacle under 
other forms, in the free and independent citizen who 
makes his own interests and preferences supreme. That 
man who in the democratic State regards the machinery 
of government as the agent of his own interests and 
desires, differs in no essential respect from the autocrat 



222 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

who imposes his will upon his fellows. Liberty that 
means self-assertion and self-seeking is death; liberty 
that means self-sacrifice and social service is life. We 
never shall have a real liberty or a true democracy till 
this principle is recognized and honored. 

It is evident that liberty alone can never truly serve man- 
kind. It is evident that the nay of liberty can never carry 
man very far along the upward way. Sin at bottom is 
selfishness, the enthronement of self-interest as the final 
law of life. And selfishness is ever and forever a principle 
of confusion and disunion, the eternal enemy of progress. 
The State that is founded upon the philosophy of atom- 
ism, of selfishness, cannot long endure. Love and self- 
sacrifice are the real foundations of society; it is only 
through the fulfilment of these principles that man has 
risen out of the mire and the State has become possible 
at all. It is evident that only through the yea of liberty 
can society really advance along its upward way and 
democracy reveal its higher meaning. 

Thus far democracy has taught men the nay of liberty, 
and it has taught it well. But it must now go forward 
and teach men the yea of liberty, and its task will not be 
finished till this is done. In the yea of liberty a man says : 
I am free from all other lesser and lower masters that I 
may come under the mastership of the King Eternal. 
In the yea of liberty a man says: The other man is as 
good as I, and in every way I shall seek his good. In 
the yea of liberty he says: I am a man with a man's 
freedom and manhood that I may do a man's work and 
may live for the common weal. In the yea of liberty he 
says: The common good is the supreme concern, and I 
shall seek and find my good in and through the good of 
all. This defines the first great unfinished task of 
democracy. 

II. The New Social Tyranny. In the more progres- 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 223 

sive lands of the world, religious liberty and political 
democracy have been gained, and it is not likely that they 
will ever be lost. There is the expression of the great 
principles of democracy — liberty, equality, and brother- 
hood, in religious and political relations. The fathers 
agreed among themselves that the authority of govern- 
ment should never be used in propagating any form of 
religion or even in compelling men to worship God at 
all. They agreed among themselves that no man and no 
set or class or caste of men should ever possess any privi- 
leges in the State which were not equally open to all. 
They agreed among themselves further, that no patent 
of nobility should ever be issued to any man, but that 
the way to honor must be kept open to all. They wrote 
out these agreements in a constitution which they made 
the fundamental law of the land, to be changed only by 
the express consent of a majority of the voters. They 
decreed that the government which exists shall derive 
its just powers from the consent of the governed. And 
more important than all, they declared that the State is 
the co-operation of all for the sake of each. 

But we have discovered that not everything has been 
done that needs to be done. There are whole classes of 
rights which are not yet defined and secured. The 
citizen possesses the ballot, but he is not content. He 
lives under a written constitution, but his rights are not 
all therein defined. He possesses the political franchise, 
but the golden age has not yet dawned. He Is a free 
citizen, and yet he feels himself defrauded of some of 
his dearest rights. In a word, man has gained religious 
and political democracy, but he has come to see that the 
democratic task is not finished till he has gained indus- 
trial and social democracy. Perhaps we can best describe 
this new task before democracy by applying some of the 
democratic principles to man\s social and industrial life. 



224 '^^^ CHRISTIAN STATE 

I. In a free and just society every man is entitled to the 
products of his own industry. That which a man creates 
belongs to him. This right is natural and inherent, and 
society neither creates this right nor destroys it. For 
this reason, all forms of slavery, in which one man con- 
trols the life and claims the labor of another, are wrong in 
principle and indefensible in practice. For this reason 
also, all kinds of exploitation that manipulate the 
labor of others and take from the workers an unjust 
portion of their product, are no less wrong in method 
and unjust in results. For this reason any governmental 
regulation or commercial system that interferes in any 
way with this right of possession contravenes some of 
the great and sacred rights of man. There are various 
ways in which this process of filching may be carried on, 
but these in nowise affect its essential injustice. Thus, it 
matters nothing whether this process is illustrated in 
some feudal system where a few nobles own all the land 
and compel all the people to toil as serfs; or in some 
colonial system where the home government exploits the 
colony for its own advantages and exacts taxation without 
representation ; or in some industrial system where a few 
men control the means of production and distribution and 
compel all the people to pay tribute. The particular 
method or system is of no moment and does not affect the 
essential injustice of the transaction or modify its un- 
democratic spirit. 

And once more. In a free and fraternal society all men 
are entitled to a fair inheritance in the natural resources 
of the earth. In a way this is recognized by all just 
governments, and so they provide that the rivers and 
seas cannot become private property, but must be held 
as common carriers. In a way, also, society recognizes 
this principle with respect to land, for the right of emi- 
nent domain as it Is called is generally admitted. But this 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 225 

principle is of wide application, and in a fair and free 
society it must be universally honored. Suppose now the 
time should come when the various conditions that sus- 
tain life should fall into the control of a few men. Sup- 
pose these men by the use of great skill or vast capital 
should gain control of the means of production and dis- 
tribution and should use these means primarily for their 
own enrichment. And suppose that these few men should 
give every man in the land who may be engaged in the 
same line of trade the hard option of selling out to them at 
their own price or being crushed out of business. In 
all these cases some of the inherent and imprescriptible 
rights of man are violated and trampled under foot ; and 
in all of them society is essentially unjust and tyrannical 
whatever may be the form of its government. (See 
Abbott, ''The Rights of Alan," chap, iv.) 

That some of these rights are endangered even in the 
most democratic lands, is a matter of common knowledge. 
In all lands to-day there is a marked tendency toward co- 
operation of forces and combination of interests, and in 
a large sense this tendency is natural and right and 
cannot be resisted. Pure individualism is inconceivable, 
and simple independence is impossible. " You must unite 
and combine and co-operate "—this is the mandate of 
the universe to the children of men. " Competition is 
wasteful, individualism is wicked, and self-seeking is 
suicide." But just here arises a danger that cannot be 
ignored and must not be minimized. This tendency 
toward unity and co-operation in production and distribu- 
tion is making possible an industrial autocracy the most 
despotic and undemocratic the world has ever seen. 

2. In democratic America it is found that a few men 

control the coal industry, and determine how much shall 

be mined, what wages the miners shall receive, and what 

prices the people shall pay. In this land the iron and steel 

p 



226 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

industry is in the hands of a few men, and these determine 
at once the output for a year and the prices to be paid ; 
they decide also who may be permitted to engage in this 
line of business, and no man can long manufacture steel 
without their permission. In this land a few men control 
the railroads, and they determine what rates shall prevail, 
what communities shall prosper, and all this with little 
regard to the interests of the people. In this land a few 
men control the petroleum industry, and determine how 
much oil shall be refined, what shall be paid for the crude 
oil to the producer, and what shall be paid for the refined 
oil by the consumer. The simple facts of the case are 
that a few men, by the use of great skill and large capital, 
are getting control of the means of production and dis- 
tribution, and are fastening upon the necks of the people 
an industrial autocracy more irresponsible and tyrannical 
than the world has yet known. Whether men know it or 
not, " our vision of freedom is passing into the eclipse 
of universal corporate compulsion in the interest of cap- 
italism " (Small, "The Outlook," June 17, 1899). And 
Professor Howerth shows how '' there has been growing 
up in modern times an institution which, as a means of 
control and privilege, has become more potent than 
Church or State. That institution is capitalism, or speak- 
ing generally, the industrial institution. . . This is but to 
say that power has concentrated in the hands of those 
who have secured possession of the instruments of pro- 
duction, and in some cases that power is greater than 
that formerly wielded by kings and emperors. It would 
be a miracle if this power were not abused. That it has 
been, no one will deny" ("American Journal of Soci- 
ology," Sept., 1906). In sober truth it may be said 
that no political autocrat of the past ever possessed more 
than a tithe of the real power of these modern industrial 
and social autocrats. 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 227 

In all the States and cities we find an outside institu- 
tion known as a corporation exercising a general con- 
trol over the whole life of the people. The masters of 
these corporations decide who shall be nominat-ed for 
mayors in the cities and governors in the States; they 
dictate platforms and determine policies; they make and 
unmake congressmen and senators ; they keep from pub- 
lic life strong and worthy and noble men and allow their 
own agents to be chosen; they exact certain charges for 
public services with little reference to the real value of 
the service ; they tax the people at every turn, and all this 
without representation or redress on their part. " We 
have abolished kings and have substituted railway kings ; 
we have abolished lords and have substituted coal barons " 
(Lym.an Abbott, ''The Outlook," Nov. 17, 1906). We 
have agreed to call no man master in political relations 
and to pay no tax without representation, but we have 
permitted commercial masters to gain control of trade and 
tax the people according to their own pleasure. We may 
call this what we will, but we cannot call it democracy. 

3. Then, for another thing, we find that the industrial 
and social forces of society are more and more being ex- 
ploited for the disproportionate advantage and enrich- 
ment of the few. This result grows out of the tendency 
just described and its effects are most marked. In the 
older economics it was taught that competition was all- 
potent and would regulate everything; it would speedily 
right any wrongs that might be committed, and would 
keep the books well balanced. Be all this as it may, the 
fact is, free and fair competition no longer exists In 
modern society, but practically everything is determined 
by combination. In the older economics it was also taught 
that the law of supply and demand regulated everything 
and automatically determined the wage of the worker and 
the prices of commodities. This law, however, has little 



228 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

to do with the price of commodities in these times. " The 
prices of most of the staple commodities consumed by 
mankind have no necessary relation to the cost of pro- 
ducing them and placing them in the hands of the con- 
sumer " (Ward, ''Psychic Factors of Civilization," p. 
327). All this is made possible by the vast industrial 
power that is concentrated in the hands of a few men. 

And in this process it may also be observed that the 
gains which accrue to the few have little relation to the 
real service which they render. The incomes of some 
of these modern captains of industry are simply colossal. 
Thus the salary paid the average minister of the gospel 
will barely reach eight hundred dollars. The salary of a 
university president rarely exceeds ten thousand dollars, 
while many serve for far less; and the salary of the 
President of the United State is but fifty thousand dollars 
a year. Yet some of these captains of industry have 
incomes from ten to a hundred times as great as the salary 
of the President of the United States. Surely no sane 
man would care to defend the thesis that the services of 
these men to society are so many times greater than the 
services of the Chief Executive of the nation or the 
presidents of great universities or even those of many 
pastors of our churches. 

It may be admitted that the methods that are employed 
to secure these results differ widely from the methods 
that were once in vogue, while the results differ little if 
at all. Once, men aggressed upon their fellows by 
waylaying them by the roadside and persuading them with 
a club to empty their purses; now they aggress upon 
their fellows by forming an industrial combination and 
filching their earnings. Once the knights rode booted 
and spurred across the country and plundered the hap- 
less wayfarer; now these barons of the market obtain 
sDecial privileges and plunder the people. Under such 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 229 

circumstances, as Lloyd suggests, prices paid to these 
overlords of industry and these intercepters of trade are 
not an exchange of services; they are the ransom paid 
by the people for their lives (" Wealth Against Com- 
monwealth," 502). Thus while the means that are used 
to-day differ widely from the means that were used of 
old, at heart the new oHgarchy is not one whit better than 
the old autocracy. 

It may be said that many plausible pleas are advanced 
in justification of this present system. Thus it is claimed 
that these combinations prevent wasteful competition 
and thus cheapen products. And it is also claimed that 
these great combinations are necessary in order that the 
commercial interests of the world may be developed. 
Now, even if this were the case, the answer is yet wide 
of the mark. But this is not true, and therefore it is but 
a subterfuge. It may be said in justification of absolute 
monarchy that it has many advantages and makes for 
human welfare ; for even a bad government is better than 
no government at all. No doubt many incidental advan- 
tages accrue to the people in a monarchical government, 
and if incidental advantages were the whole of life even 
monarchy might be endured. From the groundling's 
point of view nothing was more foolish than the Pilgrims' 
adventure — to leave ease and comfort behind and cross 
the wintry sea all for the sake of a few sentimental 
notions. From the point of view of the social Tory noth- 
ing was more unreasonable than the Revolutionary 
fathers — the tax on paper and tea was a mere trifle ; and 
then these articles were cheaper in Boston than in Lon- 
don. But the question at issue with the Pilgrims was 
not ease and self-interest, but truth and soul liberty; 
the question at issue in the Revolutionary War was not 
the price of paper and tea, but taxed paper and tea. 
Going behind all incidental advantages that may accrue 



230 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

from such industrial control we may say that the real 
question at issue is not the price of commodities, but 
the one fact of monopoly taxes. It is not a question 
whether steel and coal, oil and beef are cheaper or dearer 
than they otherwise would be ; the real question is whether 
these commodities are controlled by a few industrial over- 
lords who fix prices and control the markets of the 
country. This monopoly control may cheapen prices, 
but this monopoly control is not democracy. 

It must be said also that many of these industrial man- 
agers are men of clean lives and religious disposition. 
To those who cannot distinguish between a man's per- 
sonal life and his public conduct this indictment of them 
may seem harsh and unfair. But the personal characters 
of these men are not the real questions at stake. It is 
not so much a question of men as of systems. Monarchy, 
we have agreed, is bad whoever the particular incumbent 
of the throne may be. Industrial autocracy is intolerable 
in a free State, without any reference to the character of 
the autocrats. For these reasons the question must be 
considered in an impersonal way, and the characters of 
men must not becloud the real issue. 

4. Then, for a fourth thing, we find as the result of 
these tendencies now in operation, that the range of 
opportunity and initiative in social and industrial life 
is steadily narrowing for the great majority of men. 
Some of this it may be is inevitable, but much of it 
is unnecessary, and some of it is unjust. The time has 
been when the manufacturer wrought with his own 
hands, sitting or standing side by side with his helpers 
and apprentices. In his own home he installed a few 
looms, as the case might be, and though his capital was 
small, he maintained himself in comfort and was happy. 
And his apprentice looked forward to the time when he 
might be his own master, and might set up in life for 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 27,1 

himself — and possibly might marry his early master's 
daughter. The time has now come when great factories 
are built wherein thousands of employees labor at the 
command of another, and with no real stake in the busi- 
ness. These undertakings represent a colossal investment, 
and are only possible where men possess unlimited capital. 
As a result of it all the man of small means is placed at a 
disadvantage, and fair competition is out of the question. 

It is true that there is always room at the top for the 
few men of force and talent, but the average man has no 
hope of being anything else than a " hand " toiling under 
the direction of another. Thus far it may be this process 
is inevitable; and much farther it may be this tendency 
will continue. But be the process inevitable or not, the 
State must carefully watch it and must faithfully safe- 
guard the interests of the weaker man; it must see to it 
that every person has free opportunity and fair privilege, 
and is not placed at a total disadvantage by his stronger 
competitor. 

But much of this narrowing of opportunity for the aver- 
age man is wholly unnecessary, and is only possible where 
gross injustice is done. Thus we have seen how through 
the concentration of vast wealth the elimination of free 
competition has resulted and the one man is handicapped 
or put out of the race. In many lines of manufacture and 
trade it is impossible for one with limited capital — who 
is not a member of the combination and will not adopt 
its methods — to maintain himself for any length of time. 
The moment his competition becomes in any wise effective 
he is given the hard option of joining the combination 
or being driven out of business. This means that the great 
mass of men are being reduced to a condition of 
industrial dependence and serfdom. They are being re- 
duced to the position of employees in a vast corporation, 
and the range of their initiative in life is thereby nar- 



232 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

rowed. Democracy means fair opportunity for all; and 
where such opportunity does not exist there democracy 
is but an empty name. Under the present growing 
tendency toward industrial autocracy the range of life of 
the average man is rapidly narrowing, and equality of 
opportunity is fast disappearing. In modern demo- 
cratic lands political feudalism has disappeared forever; 
but in the most democratic lands a new industrial feudal- 
ism is being established. And this feudalism, it may 
be said, is even more absolute and more arrogant and all- 
dominant than any political feudalism the world has ever 
experienced. 

5. And for another thing, we find as the result of this 
whole process, that government is in danger of becoming 
less and less democratic, and of becoming more and more 
commercial. There are several causes that contribute in 
a special way toward this plutocratic control, and these 
are all deserving of careful study. Thus, for one thing, in 
America the wealth of the nation has multiplied at an 
almost miraculous rate ; and this has done much to dazzle 
the eyes of the people and to lead them to rate all prog- 
ress in terms of money values. Then, with this increase 
of wealth, there has come an increase of luxury, with its 
false standards in social life. The old simplicity of life, 
the democratic simplicity as it was called, has disappeared, 
and with it have gone many salutary customs. We have 
grown literally afraid of being poor; and we have come 
to measure success by one's bank account. And with 
this has come a change in the standards of public life 
and official propriety; and these changes make it prac- 
tically impossible for a poor man to hold high office in 
either State or nation. A great change has passed over 
American public life since the days when Jefferson was 
inaugurated president; for history records how this 
man rode on horseback to the capitol, and in great sim- 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 233 

plicity advanced to take the oath of office. Because of 
all these changes, which cannot all be called changes for 
the better, public office is more and more passing into the 
hands of the wealthy members of society. 

But this is not all, and this is not the worst. So long 
as things are prized above men that long money will be 
potent in human affairs. Money has been known the 
world over and in all ages for its power to blind the eyes 
and influence the wills of men. It is not strange, there- 
fore, that the vast money interests of the country should 
have an undue weight in the affairs of government and 
should exert a baleful influence upon legislation. But 
it was hardly to be expected that in a professedly demo- 
cratic land the power of money should become so potent 
and the reign of the dollar should be so manifest. That 
this is the fact, that the people of America are in danger 
of a plutocracy, is the calm judgment of many students 
of our public life. And this plutocratic government, we 
are also told, is giving us the most despotic masters the 
world has ever known, and the most irresponsible. Now, 
whatever this may be, it is not democracy. 

6. Thus far there is quite general agreement among 
students of all shades of opinion and all schools of 
thought. When, however, we consider the remedies that 
may be applied we find men breaking up into groups and 
even arraying themselves in hostile camps. It is not 
necessary, and it is not possible to consider the various 
remedies that may be proposed ; but we may note two of 
the conditions that must be observed in every fair discus- 
sion of the problem, and may indicate the direction along 
which the State must move in the fulfilment of this un- 
finished task. 

For one thing, it is too late to consider seriously the 
proposition of suppressing all forms of industrial com- 
bination and co-operation. This tendency toward combi- 



234 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

nation of forces and solidarity of interests is too funda- 
mental and potent to be successfully resisted. In all 
departments of life men are learning that co-operation 
is cheaper and better than competition; and when once 
they have tasted the advantages of combination they are 
never likely to throw them away. Thus, the railroads of 
the country are more and more being unified into one 
great system, and the time may come in the near future 
when they will practically compose one united system. 
Thus also the steel industries are more and more becom- 
ing welded into one. The same is true of a hundred other 
interests. A world that has learned the advantages of 
combination and co-operation is not likely to abandon 
them ; and it may be said that such a course would retard 
progress and work injury. In all our thought of modern 
society and its wrongs we must take this fact into 
account and must adjust ourselves to its necessity. There 
will be more and not less consolidation of industries and 
solidarity of interests and co-operation of efforts as time 
goes by and men become more wise. 

As the result of this natural process this is what we 
find : On the one hand the great industries of the world 
are coming more and more under one management. On 
the other hand the whole life and welfare of society are 
vitally dependent upon each of these great consolidated 
industries. The coal industry is practically complete 
within itself, and practically within the control of a single 
combination ; and the life and peace of the people in the 
remotest village are conditioned upon the operation and 
order in this one industry. The same is true of the rail- 
roads of the land which have come under the virtual con- 
trol of a few men. This means two things: that the 
people are vitally concerned in the methods and manage- 
ment of every great industry ; and it means that the whole 
people must suffer when any disturbance or stoppage 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 235 

occurs. This means also that these great industries, 
through this natural and inevitable process of develop- 
ment, have gained an almost absolute power over the 
lives and destinies of men ; for they can fix wages, deter- 
mine output, regulate prices, and compel all the people 
to pay a tax in the form of monopoly prices; nay, they 
can even decide whether men shall have fuel and heat in 
their homes and whether the wheels of a hundred in- 
dustries shall turn. And it means that the welfare of the 
whole people is vitally related to the orderly working of 
any one industry ; and the stoppage of its wheels from any 
cause may cause widespread disaster and suffering. 

This brings us face to face with the unfinished task 
of democracy, a task that must be fulfilled before it can 
be fully a reality. It is plain that all efforts in behalf of 
this democracy must move along certain lines. There 
must be such control over all the forces and factors of 
man's social and industrial life as shall — on the one hand 
— prevent the evils of monopoly and safeguard society 
against suffering and injustice; or— on the other hand — 
the people must themselves assume the ownership and 
operation of these forces and factors to the extent at least 
of ensuring domestic tranquillity, promoting the general 
welfare, and enabling each person to have a fair standing 
in society. Which course the State shall finally adopt we 
need not attempt to determine, but one or the other course 
must be taken by the State that is even approximately 
democratic. There are many who fear the latter course and 
denounce the mention of such a contingency as an advo- 
cacy of socialism; but the men who resist the effective 
regulation of all industry and trade are the very men 
who are promoting the socialistic propaganda. And 
after all, while such a governmental regime, which means 
the ownership and operation of the chief means of pro- 
duction and distribution, might have some disadvantages 



236 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

and dangers, these are but trifles compared with the 
injustice and discontent that will follow in a monopoly 
control. The time has gone by when we can seriously 
ask that the State seek to negative this tendency toward 
combination and co-operation, for its advantages are too 
manifest and too real. They who demand that the State 
shall suppress all combinations know not what they do; 
and all unthinkingly they would turn the hands backward 
upon the dial of progress. But the State must accomplish 
the more necessary and yet more difficult task of securing 
the benefits of combination without suffering any of its 
evils. The whole development of modern society is ma- 
king necessary an extension of State action into man's 
economic life. And the great principle of democracy is 
demanding such a democratization of industry as shall 
equalize social opportunity and give every person a fair 
standing in society. 

The things that have been named are in flagrant con- 
tradiction of the democratic ideal, and democracy will 
never be more than a name till it has vindicated the social 
rights of the people. In some lands as, e. g., America and 
Switzerland, the old battle for human rights has been 
fought out to a successful issue, and the poHtical rights 
of men are now defined and safeguarded. The fathers 
discovered that the political liberties of men were not 
safe in the hands of any political autocrat be he person- 
ally good or bad. The time has come for the children to 
declare that the social rights of the people are not safe in 
the hands of any social autocrat and industrial oligarchy, 
and all this without reference to their character. The 
time has come for the people to agree among themselves 
that no special privileges of any kind shall be granted 
to any man, and they must preserve these free institu- 
tions by writing out certain guarantees of equality. 
" Liberty and democracy," said Aristotle, " are not pos- 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 237 

sible without equality of condition." '' Give a man power 
over my subsistence," said Alexander Hamilton, '* and he 
has power over the whole of my moral being." 

III. The Direct Participation of the People in the 
Affairs of Government. Democracy, in the words of one 
of its best representatives, is government " of the people, 
by the people, and for the people." In the last analysis 
this defines the difference between democracy and all 
other forms of the State. In so far as we have this 
direct participation of the people we have democracy, and 
no farther. But from various causes, only two of which 
need be mentioned here, this direct participation is de- 
nied, and democracy even in America is at best only an 
approximation. 

The first set of causes is the number of obstacles that 
are placed between the people and the government. It is 
sometimes said that the men of the convention which 
framed the American Constitution were convinced be- 
lievers in democracy. It is sometimes supposed that this 
constitution provides for a fully democratic system of 
government, and that the people have a direct voice in 
the affairs of State. But neither supposition is more than 
approximately true. There were men in the State at 
that time who believed in democracy, but such men were 
in reality few. And significantly enough, some of these 
men, such as Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, were 
not members of the convention. There were some men 
in the convention itself who were believers in democracy, 
such as Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and George 
Washington, but not all the members shared the same 
spirit. In fact, the proceedings of the convention, not 
published till years afterward, show that some of the men 
in that convention cherished a profound distrust of the 
people and tried to keep the government as far away from 
their meddling as possible. In all of the colonies a sys- 



238 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

tern of popular government in local matters had prevailed, 
and on the whole it worked remarkably well. But in all 
parts of the convention there were serious doubts whether 
this principle of popular elections could safely be ap- 
plied to national affairs. After long debate it was re- 
solved that the national legislature should consist of 
two branches ; and then arose the question how the mem- 
bers should be chosen. Some were of the opinion that 
they should be chosen directly by the people, but this was 
stoutly opposed by others. Out of this conflict of opinion 
came the compromise which provided for a lower house 
elected by the people, and an upper house or senate 
chosen by the States. This distrust was shown not alone 
in the representative character of the government, but 
also in the number of checks and balances that were 
placed upon the people and their representatives. 
Throughout there was a studied effort on the part of 
some to exclude the people from direct participation in 
the government and to keep the government as far away 
from them as possible. Out of it all has come a system 
of representative government which nominally is a gov- 
ernment of the people but is only remotely a government 
by the people, and consequently is not always a govern- 
ment for the people. 

In a small community it is possible to have all the 
affairs of government under the direct control of a popu- 
lar assembly. But in a large State or in a federal nation 
this is wholly out of the question. By the necessities of 
the case there must be some form of representative gov- 
ernment. This being so, the people must depend for the 
wise control of public affairs on some human agency; 
and no authority in the State has ever been found so 
worthy of entire public confidence as a deliberative as- 
sembly composed of reputable representative men. We 
must recognize this fact fully and finally, we are told. 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 239 

" We must comprehend, fully and finally, that our security 
for a wise and upright administration of public affairs is 
to be found, not in the restriction of power, but in its 
enlargement; not in distrust, but in confidence" (Stick- 
ney, ''Organized Democracy," pp. 68, 69). 

The second set of causes which stands between the 
people and the government and makes a fully democratic 
government impossible is the party system. It may be 
said that political parties of some kind are more or less 
inevitable in every government ; and it may even be said 
that they are necessary. It is natural, possibly, and it is 
desirable certainly, that there should be differences of 
opinion on many questions of public policy. It is natural 
as it is inevitable for men who hold the same views in 
common to drift together and find some means of making 
their views effective. " The greatest discovery ever made 
in the art of war was when men began to perceive that 
organization and discipline count for more than numbers. 
This discovery gave the Spartan infantry a long career 
of victory in Greece, and the Swiss infantry a not 
less brilliant renown in the later Middle Ages. 'The 
Americans made a similar discovery in politics fifty 
or sixty years ago" (Bryce, ''The American Com- 
monwealth," Vol. II, p. 44). Thus by degrees there 
has grown up in America a system of party gov- 
ernment the most complete and perfect the world has 
known; and out of this party government there have 
come results that have made popular government little 
else than a name. It is easy to frame an indictment the 
most sweeping and severe against the American party 
system; but only one or two counts in this indictment 
can be specified. For one thing, this party government 
means machine politics; and this is Irresponsible action 
raised to the nth power. This constitutes a tyranny the 
most subtle and far-reaching; and it is as brutal as it is 



240 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

undemocratic. There are probably no autocratic gov- 
ernments in the world, outside of Turkey, that exert 
as subtle and silent a tyranny over men as the party 
system in democratic America. Party government at its 
best means stagnation; it means commonplace ideas and 
past issues ; its platform represents the age that is passing, 
and it seldom voices the aspirations that are to be. Party 
government at its worst spells compromise and not prin-. 
ciple ; its leaders have their ears to the ground and never 
their eyes upon the stars; it means mediocrity and infe- 
riority where it does not mean cowardice and corruption. 
The good partisan cannot be a good citizen. 

Then the party government might be called a system 
for keeping the best men out of public life. Under every 
form of government we must depend in the last analysis 
upon the capacity and honesty of the men who hold 
public office. That system of government cannot be 
wholly bad which enables the best men to serve the people 
in any civic capacity; and that system of government 
cannot be even remotely good which disbars the best men 
from public life. That the party system in its actual 
working accomplishes this latter result is a fact known to 
all. Not ability, but availability is the one qualification 
which the party managers demand. Not candidates who 
cherish ideals, but men who will take advice are the kind 
of men wanted. The party machine stands between the 
people and the government and arrogates to itself the 
most amazing functions. Thus this system of party 
government makes a popular government little else than 

a name. 

Two things, we thus see, have contributed to bring 
about this separation of the people from their govern- 
ment. The first is the system of representative govern- 
ment which removes it as far as possible from the people 
themselves. And the second is the American party sys- 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCIL\CY 24I 

tern which provides the very means for designing men 
to use the government for their own ends. And thus 
we are brought face to face with another unfinished task 
of democracy, and one of the most difficult of all. That 
democracy may be in fact as in name it is necessary that 
there be a direct participation of the people in the affairs 
of government. It is not necessary to discuss all of the 
measures that may contribute to this end; but two are 
worthy of a full trial. 

The first is what may be called direct legislation by 
the people. The power to enact laws may be exercised 
by the people directly or through their chosen represen- 
tatives. The latter method is the one that prevails gen- 
erally in democratic lands. Under this system there is 
often a complete divergence between the will of the people 
and the action of their representatives, and hence the 
legislation does not represent the consent of the gov- 
erned. To remedy these evils and to give the people a 
direct voice in the affairs of government is the one 
object of the system known as the initiative and refer- 
endum. 

There are many aspects of this system as seen in 
operation in Switzerland and Australasia, and as ex- 
pounded by its advocates in Britain and America; but 
none the less there are several constants and these are 
the essentials of the system. There are differences of 
opinion with reference to the origination and formulation 
of measures to be submitted to the people. Shall these 
measures originate with the people and be wrought into 
shape by a legislative assembly and then be submitted 
to the people? Or shall these measures be formulated 
by the petitioners themselves and then be submitted to 
the people by the proper election boards? These are 
minor details and do not affect the central principle which 
provides that the people shall have the means whereby 
Q 



242 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

they can express themselves directly upon all measures 
in the State. The people in this system can put a direct 
veto upon any legislative measures proposed by any 
body in city or State; and the people can propose new 
measures and express their will with reference to any 
measures that they may deem vital. This makes for 
simplicity and straightforwardness in legislation on the 
one hand, and on the other it trains the people in the art 
of government and makes them know their stake in the 
life of the State. It corrects some of the evils of democ- 
racy with more democracy. 

The second measure that must be adopted in some 
form if democracy is to be more than a name, is that of 
direct popular nomination of candidates. Through the 
system of party government with delegated conventions 
it has come about that the people have no direct voice in 
the nomination of candidates and the making of plat- 
forms. Because of all this the average citizen now takes 
little interest in political matters. Thus the control of 
the party machine, and consequently the direction of the 
affairs of government, have fallen into the hands of the 
few active and interested men who are able to manipulate 
the party machinery and dictate the government's policy. 
To obviate this, and to give the people a direct voice in 
the selection of candidates some such method as the direct 
primary has been devised. According to the provisions 
of this system any man may announce himself as a can- 
didate for any office; or his friends may announce his 
name and submit it to the people. This system may be 
extended indefinitely, and provision may be made whereby 
the voters can express themselves with reference to the 
issues that they believe should be brought to the front in 
any given campaign. To make possible such participa- 
tion in the affairs of government and then train the people 
in its exercise is one of the unfinished tasks of democracy. 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACV 243 

By the methods named and by many others that may be 
considered it is beHeved that democracy may become 
more nearly an approximation and reahty. 

IV. The Democracy of All Life. Implied in all the 
problems named, growing- out of the tasks thus far de- 
fined, at once the sum of all and the fulfilment of all, is 
the one great task that yet remains to be considered. 
Some elements of this unfinished task may be here men- 
tioned. 

Thus far democracy has not spoken its full message. 
There are three great ideas that in a way have become 
articles of the democratic faith, and these must have their 
due place in the full-orbed truth. One of these funda- 
mental ideas is liberty ; and to gain this boon men have 
struggled long and have counted not their lives dear unto 
themselves. Another great watchword is equality; and 
after long struggle and delay this principle has been 
asserted in political relations at least. The other great 
ideal is fraternity, and after all these centuries of delay 
and eflfort this ideal has begun to find expression at least 
in political manifestoes and social Utopias. But the 
recognition of this ideal has been partial at best, and its 
realization in its fulness lies yet in the unexplored future. 
The message of democracy will not be fully uttered till 
these great principles are fully understood, and these 
great ideals are fully realized. Thus democracy, like the 
kingdom of God, is always here, and yet it is always to 
come. 

Thus far democracy in its spirit and method has been 
largely negative and individualistic. It has emphasized 
individualism and has overlooked solidarity. It has been 
suspicious of government, and has been resentful of social 
control. It has cleared the ground but it has not built the 
temple. It has outlined the new society, but it has not 
created the society itself. To complete its task, to ful- 



244 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

fil its mission, democracy must become positive and con- 
structive. It must learn the meaning of government and 
must teach men how to use it for the whole welfare of all. 
It must create a human society in which the person shall 
be accorded all of his rights, and must insure a liberty 
that means the highest solidarity. In a word, it must 
complete itself in fraternity, which is the democracy of 
all life. Four elements in this final task may be men-, 

tioned. 

I. For one thing, democracy must become positive and 
constructive. Thus far it has been almost wholly negative 
and preparatory. The time has now come for democracy 
to become a positive and constructive thing, and to build 
up a righteous and fraternal society. Nothing can live 
upon mere negatives ; only positive truth can ever be the 
food of men and nations. No great society can be built 
out of discrete and suspicious atoms ; in a great society 
the principles of fraternity and solidarity must be har- 
monized in some all-inclusive synthesis. The world 
has heard the nay of democracy and a great and glorious 
word it has been. The time has come for the world to 
hear the yea of democracy, the still more glorious and 
wonderful word. Democracy has trampled upon crowns 
and scepters and has called them nothings ; it has repudi- 
ated titles of nobiUty and privileges of estates; it has 
razed temples and palaces that man might be free to live 
his own life in his own way ; it has spelled out the rights 
of man and has defined those rights in written constitu- 
tions. Democracy must now begin to build new temples 
and palaces for all the people ; it must now declare what 
are the things that are truly honorable and authoritative ; 
it must now define and illustrate the true titles of no- 
bility and worth ; it must now spell out the duties of man 
and must inspire him to fulfil those duties. Democracy 
has told us what are the things that are worthless and 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 245 

wrong, and humanity is grateful for this message. It 
must now demonstrate that the common man is a kingly 
soul and the voice of the people is the voice of God. 
Democracy must now teach man to walk in love as the 
child of the Father and as the brother of his fellows. 
The democracy of blank negations and narrow individual- 
ism is worn out and is passing away ; the world awaits a 
democracy of human brotherhood and divine righteous- 
ness. Democracy, when interpreted in a narrow indi- 
viduaHstic and suspicious spirit is a principle of con- 
fusion and disunion and anarchy. Democracy, to be 
stable and potent, to fulfil its high mission and truly bless 
the world, must become a principle of faith and brother- 
hood and must find its guarantees in the mutual sacri- 
fices and services of mankind. 

2. Again, democracy must maintain liberty and 
equality and fraternity through social control. Life is 
full of paradoxes, and here is a paradox that cannot be 
evaded. Personal freedom can come only through social 
regulation. The one man finds his largest liberty in the 
fullest social solidarity (Ward, "Psychic Factors of 
Civilization," p. 275). We have learned in the earlier 
chapters of this study that liberty by itself and of itself 
is no boon ; we have learned also that the individual comes 
to his best estate only in and through society. A state of 
society, if such were possible, in which each man is free 
to do what he pleases and to regard only his own prefer- 
ences, would be the least free and the most intolerable 
condition imaginable. The fact is, such condition would 
mean the lowest savagery, and would be destitute of one 
worthful and human quality. 

In its earlier stages, the struggle for democracy has 
been a struggle against governmental usurpation with an 
emphasis upon the individual and his rights. All this has 
been inevitable, in view of the kinds of governments that 



246 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

have existed, and soon or late such struggle was necessary. 
At any rate, it is in and through this process of struggle 
and denial that the individual has come to self-conscious- 
ness and his rights have been defined. But the time has 
come for men to learn the real meaning of government 
and to consider the real nature of society; the time has 
come for men to honor the great principle of solidarity 
and come to what may be called social consciousness. 
Under the reign of these earlier ideas of democracy men 
have lived in a fear of government, and have hesitated to 
take any step forward for fear of limiting some right of 
man. Because of this distrust of government, it has come 
about that it has been shorn of its power, and its useful- 
ness in promoting progress has been weakened. Under 
the reign of these ideas of individualism men have denied 
the authority of government over their private and busi- 
ness affairs, and have demanded that they be left free to 
follow what they call the natural laws of trade. Thus, to 
mark the result of this fear in one realm of life, there has 
grown up an industrial system that in many respects is 
more unjust and oppressive than any political autocracy 
the world has ever known. But progress means social 
integration, and personal liberty comes only through 
social control. Progress has never been secured merely 
by the making of good individuals; in fact, the good 
individual is himself only possible through the morali- 
zation of society. The one life lives and flourishes in and 
through the lives and fortunes of all ; and in and through 
the prosperity of all the one life is preserved and en- 
riched. In a word, it is in and through social integration 
and control that the one life comes to its best estate, 
and it is in and through the general will that the individ- 
ual finds his own will enlarged and fulfilled. 

3. And once more, democracy must perfect itself in 
a social control and solidarity that protect the rights of 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 247 

each and give all a fair inheritance in society. The doc- 
trine of individualism and atomism we have seen is a 
doctrine of anarchy and confusion, and can never bring 
social peace and progress. The progress of man and the 
peace of society can come only in and through a political 
integration and social solidarity that conserve the per- 
sonality of each and yet insure the welfare of all. This 
means not less government, but more; but it is a govern- 
ment hy all and for all, and not a government by each 
and for each. As time goes by and men become more 
socialized they will learn that government is the medium 
of the mutual sacrifices and services of the people, and 
they will learn how to use it " as a positive progressive 
instrument for the conscious creation of public welfare." 
This new democracy will be a people's government in 
the best sense of the word. The difference between autoc- 
racy and democracy is not in the amount of govern- 
mental regulation, for in a democracy there may be more 
social control than in an autocracy. The real difference 
between the two is found in the nature and incidence of 
this control. That is, in an autocracy the government is 
one imposed upon the people, a government from above 
and over their heads, a government that in no sense repre- 
sents the conscience and will of the people. But in a 
democracy we have a government of the people and by 
the people, a government that is in the people and through 
the people, a government that represents the conscience 
and will of the citizens themselves. The integration and 
control thus represented are inevitable, but the individual 
must not be crushed, and his own initiative must not be 
overridden. There is one power and only one that can 
save the person and bless society, and that is society itself. 
" There is one form of government that is stronger than 
autocracy, or aristocracy, or democracy, or even plutoc- 
racy, and that is sociocracy " (Ward, " Psychic Factors," 



248 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

p. 323). Thus the solution of the problems of this age 
and the fulfilment of the tasks of democracy are to be 
found in the establishment of a genuine people's govern- 
ment — " a government that is the effective expression of 
the public will, the active agency by which society con- 
sciously and intelligently governs its own conduct " 
(Ward, ibid., p. 329). 

In view of what was said in the second section of this 
chapter, it is evident that the democratic principle must 
be extended and applied in what may be called the social 
and industrial realms of life. It is impossible here to 
enter upon the discussion of this task in all its breadth of 
meaning, but it is one of the most insistent and difficult 
of modern times. The fate of democracy itself as a 
religious principle and a political doctrine is at stake 
here; for in the long run we must either abandon the 
democratic faith in political affairs or we must realize 
it in all life. We cannot permanently maintain a civic 
State based on democratic principles while living in an 
industrial society that is oligarchic both in form and 
spirit. " No man," said Abraham Lincoln, *' is good 
enough to rule his fellows." If this saying is true at all, 
it is as true in economic and industrial affairs as it is in 
ecclesiastical and political relations. Equality of political 
rights must lead to equality of social conditions; that is, 
the apportioning of well-being according to the work 
done. " Universal suffrage almost demands that every 
one shall be a proprietor. It is a contradiction that the 
people should be at once sovereign and miserable" (De 
Laveleye, "Contemporary Review," 1883). Man cannot 
be a sovereign in one part of life and an underling in 
another. We cannot have a government of the people 
and by the people where wealth, which is the necessary 
basis of life, is by the few and for the few. Wealth, like 
government, springs from all the people, and therefore 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 249 

wealth like government, must be for all the people. If 
manhood is dishonored and certain inalienable rights are 
traversed when men are ruled from above and are taxed 
without their consent, manhood is no less dishonored, and 
man's rights no less overridden when a few men control 
the industries of a land and determine the conditions of 
trade. Democracy, then, is little else than a name in an 
economic and industrial oligarchy. This means that the 
democratic principle shall be so extended as to insure 
a social and industrial democracy. It means that 
wealth which is created by all shall be administered for 
all. It means that every man shall have a share in the 
control of the world's industries, and that the gains to 
each shall be adjusted according to the measure of his 
contribution. It means that there shall be such a com- 
bination of labor and capital in the same hands as shall 
give every man a stake in the enterprise and a voice in its 
management. It means that man is something more than 
a cog in a machine and a hand in a factory, and that he 
shall have a voice in determining the conditions of his 
work and a fair share in the profits of the industry. It 
means that the system of co-operation and profit-sharing 
in both production and distribution shall be so extended 
as to provide for the eventual democratization of indus- 
trial life. It means that an effort shall be made to lift 
the burden of poverty from every man and to make it pos- 
sible for him to have a true inheritance in the State. It 
means that every man shall be free to choose his work in 
life, and that no man shall be compelled to do another 
man's bidding. It means that a limit will be set to the 
amount of wealth which a man can inherit, and that wealth 
which, in the last analysis is a social product, shall recog- 
nize its obligations and shall be held in trust for the public 
weal. It means that in modern society as in ancient 
Rome, where there is a testamentary disposition of 



2C0 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

property, this power conferred on the heir shall always 
be coupled with duties to be performed and trusts to be 
discharged. It does not mean an equal distribution of the 
wealth of the nation, nor does it mean that the profits of 
those who toil shall be expended by those who are idle. 
It does not mean that all men have equal capacity, but it 
does mean that capacity shall be honored wherever found, 
and that an effort will be made to develop capacity in all. 
It does not mean that any man shall have less than his 
share in the total product, but it does mean that no other 
man shall have more than his just share. 

This democracy of industry is necessary if democracy 
in politics is to be more than a name. In this democracy 
of industry the interests of all will be considered, and it 
will not be necessary for men to organize an imperium 
in imperio in order to secure, sometimes by threat of 
force, their rights against aggression by another class. 
Thus, we have labor unions wherein men unite for mutual 
advantage to secure themselves against aggression of em- 
ployers. These unions are no doubt serving a most use- 
ful purpose in the world, and are training men in what 
has been called industrial democracy. Such unions and 
co-operative enterprises are preparing the world to under- 
stand the meaning of co-operation and are teaching them 
to appreciate the need of social democracy. But such 
unions and enterprises are themselves a confession that 
government does not yet either understand or fulfil 
its true functions. If government did its full duty by 
all its members and were fully conscious of its mission, 
such unions and combinations would be wholly unneces- 
sary. The fact is such things are in themselves an^ im- 
peachment of government and show plainly that it is 
not yet fully rational or consciously democratic. One 
may deplore the blunders of these labor unions, but none 
the less these unions are absolutely the only thing at 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 25 1 

present that stands between the working man and the 
kilHng pace of modern industriahsm. They are the only 
agency that is working with steady aim to change the 
often intolerable conditions as to hours and wage which 
impersonal employing corporations make inevitable. " If 
in any far future democracy becomes a fact with all its 
man-made inequalities removed — all the present mock- 
eries gone out— the long struggle of trade unions will be 
written down among the heroisms of history" (J. G. 
Brooks, "The Outlook/' Nov. ly, 1906). 

We have gone so far in the political history of man as 
to declare that all men are created equal, and that they 
are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
rights ; we have affirmed that government rests upon the 
consent of the governed and is organized to secure cer- 
tain great ends. But thus far we have given this doctrine 
of equality a political significance, and have limited this 
affirmation of rights to civil relations. The time is com- 
ing — it is now here — when we must declare our allegiance 
to the principle of social equality. The work of estab- 
lishing this industrial and social democracy is the great- 
est work that has yet been undertaken by the political 
State, but this is the task that lies fairly before the State 
that would be democratic and rational. 

4. And last of all, and as the sum of all, democracy 
must fulfil and complete itself in a democracy of all life. 
For nearly four hundred years there has been a dropped 
thread in the loom of history, and as a consequence the 
fabric of society has not reached its full beauty and per- 
fection. The whole movement at first, as embodied in the 
Reformation of the sixteenth century, was a struggle 
after liberty in the State no less than purity in the Church. 
Out of this movement came results that are world-wide 
and far-reaching, and we of to-day feel their ground 
swell. Out of this struggle came the separation of 



252 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Church and State with the whole product known as 
poHtical democracy. But the Reformation movement 
soon lost some of its early enthusiasm and power, and as 
Macaulay shows in his famous '' Essay on Von Ranke," 
it failed to achieve the highest and largest results. It is 
true that out of this great movement, in one of its minor 
streams at the time, came far-reaching results, which led 
directly to political freedom and democracy in govern- 
ment. But those ideas which meant social justice were 
strangely overlooked by the leading reformers, and the 
men who pleaded for social democracy were harried and 

slain. 

In these later times a new aspiration after social free- 
dom and industrial democracy has made itself manifest 
and is growing more insistent from year to year. And 
one of the most significant things about this modern 
movement is the vital relation that exists between it and 
the early ideas of the Reformation. Balfort Bax, in his 
notable studies on " The Social Side of the Reformation 
in Germany," has shown that the early movement was 
as much a social as a religious revolt. So also in a sug- 
gestive book on the Anabaptist movement, Richard 
Heath has emphasized the social aspect of the struggle 
of the peasants for justice and democracy. The reform 
before the Reformation was in the truest sense a move- 
ment in behalf of social justice and universal democracy. 
In this meaning at least, those who are in any religious 
sense the descendants of this earlier Reformation, are the 
people who should be vitally interested in this struggle 
for social democracy. At any rate— and this is the fact 
that may be emphasized— there are many indications that 
the great movement for human freedom and social justice, 
begun in the Reformation, is about to take on new life 
and complete itself in what may be called the democracy 
of all life. There are many indications that the demo- 



THE UNFINISHED TASKS OF DEMOCRACY 253 

cratic spirit that has wrought in the centuries producing 
ecclesiastical liberty and political democracy is at work 
in these later times creating a new aspiration for social 
justice and finding a new incarnation in social democracy. 
There are many indications — to change the figure — that 
this dropped thread in the loom of history is about to be 
taken up again and is to be given its fitting place in the 
web of life and human progress. And this is one aspect 
at least of the new task that now confronts democracy, a 
task to which the providences of God and the development 
of society have fairly committed all confessors of the 
democratic creed. 

For there is much more implied in the idea of democ- 
racy itself than men have thus far recognized. There are 
implications of the idea that men thus far have hardly 
begun to suspect. In human thought and life there are 
several great vital architectonic principles that are as 
fundamental as life and as wide-reaching as the nature of 
man. And the principle of democracy is one of these. 
For democracy, we have begun to realize, is less a form 
of government than a confession of faith ; it is the con- 
fession of human brotherhood based upon the divine 
Fatherhood; it is the recognition of common aims and 
common hopes ; it is an effort to realize in life and society 
the great fundamental truths of man-liberty, equality, 
and fraternity; in the truest sense, it is the statement of 
the Christian truth that one is your Father who is in 
heaven, and all ye are brothers. Since this is so the 
democratic idea is a universal principle; it cannot be 
limited to any one sphere and relation of life; it can 
only become real as it finds expression in all the realms 
and institutions of society; to limit it in any way is 
treason against the very idea itself. Since this is so 
democracy will never be more than a name and an ap- 
proximation till it is thus universalized in scope and 



254 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

applied all along the line. The name of democracy, we u 
see, is one thing, and the fact of democracy is quite 
another thing. In the long run a people has just as much 
democracy as it practises and no more. And in the long 
run a people must either abandon its democratic faith or it 
must practise that faith in the whole of life. To confess 
this faith against the world, to follow this ideal, will 
require a brave spirit and may bring misunderstanding. 
For some will regard all this discussion of the democracy 
of all life as the vain fancies of an idle dreamer and will 
dismiss the whole subject with a smile and a shrug; 
others will no doubt denounce all this as socialism and 
may try to warn the world against such doctrines; 
others, it may be, will rejoice in all this as the common- 
wealth of man, and may regard it as the kingdom of 
God come to earth. The making of such a democracy is 
the best evidence that man can give that he is working in 
line with the great purpose of God in the world. The 
confession of any faith less democratic and universal than 
this is unworthy of the men who profess to believe in 
the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. 



Book III. Christianity 



Look almost where you will in the wide field of history, you 
find religion, wherever it works freely and mightily, either giving 
birth to and sustaining States, or else raising them up to a 
second Hfe after their destruction. . . The truth is that religion 
is and always has been the basis of societies and States. It is no 
mere philosophy, but a practical view of life which whole com- 
munities live by. 

— /. R. Seeley, Natural Religion, pp. i88, 201. 

Christianity is essentially a political principle and a poHtical 
power. It is constructive of the State, and bears in itself the 
power of forming the State and of developing it to its full com- 
pleteness. —Rothe, Theologische Ethik, Vol III, Sec. 2. 

There is every reason to believe that the growing self- 
consciousness of nations and other social organisms will play a 
greater and greater part in history, and that what we call prog- 
ress will be more and more determined in pace and character by 
the capacity which a nation displays for the conscious rational 
ordering of its resources. 

—John Hohson, The Social Problem, p. 261. 

The attempt to establish the social and political relations on a 
religious basis is the most divine work given to man. It is an 
attempt in which to fail is better than to succeed m any other. 
It is an attempt which must be renewed again and agam, each 
time, let us hope, under better conditions, until it succeeds; for 
it is the attempt to give effect to the redemption of the world. 
—Fremantle, The World as the Subject of Redemption, p. 208. 

These two things— the infinite or ideal worth of every man, 
and the sense of duty that comes from the recognition of it— 
together lay the ethical foundations of democracy. A democratic 
society exists quite as much to make new rights as to secure the 
old ones. Within it no privilege should be allowed to gain a 
foothold, unless it looks to the widening of the area of privilege. 
The fittest to survive in this field is he who is efficient in creating 
his peers. 

—Henry S. Nash, Genesis of the Social Conscience, p. 222. 

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of 
heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 

And the gates thereof shall in no wise be shut by day— tor 
there shall be no night there ; and they shall bring the glory and 
honor of the nations into it. 

—The Apocalypse, XXI, 2, 25. 



XI 

THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 

THERE is probably no question of political thought 
more full of difficulties than that of this chapter. 
Light, rather than heat, is the one desideratum in all 
clear thinking; but heat, rather than light, too often has 
characterized the discussion of this theme. On this we 
have views the most divergent, from the assumptions of 
the churchman who affirms that the church is the vice- 
gerent of Christ, and hence must be supreme over all 
interests and spheres, to the views of those reformers 
who assert that Christ has nothing to do with political 
matters, and hence the State and the Church are alien 
realms. The former seek to unite Church and State 
in function and administration; the latter endeavor to 
keep the two entirely apart and maintain that the State is 
best governed without any reference to religion. 

A brief outline of the question may supply us with 
certain principles for the guidance of our thought: 

I. The Conception of Church and State. In the ancient 
world the conception of Church and State as separate 
institutions did not exist. The idea of a Church apart 
from the State never entered into the mind of man. 
" With the peoples of the ancient world the State was 
the Church, and the Church was the State; the priest 
was a magistrate and the magistrate was a priest (Blackie, 
"What Does History Teach?" chap. ii). The gods 
were believed to be the progenitors of men and nations, 
and hence they had a personal interest in the welfare of 
the nation. But not all men were fitted by nature or 

R 257 



258 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

experience for direct and personal intercourse with the 
gods; and so the priest became necessary. In this way, 
by a natural process, he came to hold supreme rank and 
to have a commanding control. In some cases the priests 
ruled directly in the name of the gods; in others kings 
were the representatives of the gods, and either them- 
selves were priests or were under their influence and con- 
trol (BluntschH, ''The Theory of State," Bk. VI, chap. 
vi). In these circumstances the priest and king might be 
separate personalities, but both alike were officers of the 
State. 

In some lands, as in India and Persia, there was a 
priestly class which more or less dominated the entire 
life of the people, and even kings and rulers were depend- 
ent upon it. In other lands, as in Greece and Rome, no 
clear distinction was made between the king and the 
priest, and all through the early times the king was the 
ruler of the people and had the supervision of the 
worship. This means that in all of these lands no 
distinction was made between the rehgious and civil 
institutions; in all cases the government was as much 
concerned with religious as with civil affairs; and no 
one conceived of the Church as distinct from the State. 

Among the Semitic peoples we find much the same 
order of things, though with some signal variations. 
In the early times there was little or no differentiation 
of the religious ceremonial from the other ceremonies of 
man's life. There was a priestly class, but there was no 
religious fellowship as distinguished from the political 
State. The institutions of religion appear as part and 
parcel of the general political and social life of the people, 
and hence the distinction between Church and State is 
wholly unknown. This is not all, but " Religion was a 
part of the organized social life into which a man was 
born, and to which he conformed through life in the 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 259 

same unconscious way in which men fall into any habitual 
practice of the society in which they live. Men took 
the gods and their worship for granted, and if they 
reasoned or speculated about them, they did so on the 
presupposition that the traditional usages were fixed 
things, behind which their reasonings must not go, and 
which no reasoning could be allowed to overturn. Re- 
ligious nonconformity was an offense against the State; 
for if sacred tradition was tampered with the bases of 
society were undermined, and the favor of the gods 
was forfeited " (W. Robertson Smith, " Religion of 
Semites," p. 21). 

In that branch of the Semitic race known as the Jewish 
people, we find all of these customs and ideas, though 
with some differences that are quite characteristic. In 
the early days of Israel's life the one unit of society was 
the nation, and that included the whole life of man. The 
laws of the State rested upon the decrees of religion, 
and the ordinances of religion were enforced by the 
power of the State. In all the earlier times, " The form 
of the Jewish State was inseparable from the idea of 
the kingdom of God. And on the other hand, the idea of 
this kingdom of God was inseparable from the form of 
the Jewish State" (A. B. Davidson, " O. T. Prophecy," 
p. 164). This order of things continued down to the 
time of the great prophets, and in fact was never wholly 
abandoned. The author quoted is no doubt right in say- 
ing that " it may be questioned If the prophets had any 
idea of a church abstractly, i. e., distinct in place and 
form from the Jewish commonwealth, or a thing of no 
place or form" (ibid., p. 164). 

As time goes by several sets of influence are at work 
which are destined to produce far-reaching results. For 
one thing, the failure of the nation to become the people 
of Jehovah and to fulfil his purpose has made men see 



26o THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

that the true Israel is not all Israel. Then, in the course 
of time, through the unfaithfulness of the kings and the 
collapse of the Jewish national State, the ground is grad- 
ually cleared for another structure. And now, out of 
the ruins of the old commonwealth, there emerges an 
entirely new conception, which changes the whole out- 
look. It begins to appear even to the prophet Isaiah of 
Jerusalem that the whole people of Israel cannot be the^ 
kingdom of God. It begins to appear that there must 
be another Israel within the old Israel, a community of 
faithful and spiritual men in whom God can dwell, and 
through whom he can work. " The circle that gathered 
round Isaiah and his household in these evil days, hold- 
ing themselves apart from their countrymen, treasuring 
the word of revelation and waiting for Jehovah, were 
indeed, as Isaiah describes them, ' signs and tokens in 
Israel from Jehovah of hosts that dwelleth in Mount 
Zion.' The formation of this little community was a 
new thing in the history of religion. Till then no one 
had dreamed of a fellowship of faith dissociated from all 
national forms, maintained without the exercise of ritual 
services, bound together by faith in the divine word alone. 
It was the birth of a new era in the Old Testament 
religion, for it was the birth of the conception of the 
church, the first step in the emancipation of spiritual 
religion from the forms of political life — a step not less 
significant that all its consequences were not seen till 
centuries had passed (W. Robertson Smith, " Prophets 
of Israel," pp. 274, 275). 

There is one other factor that must be noted in the de- 
velopment of the idea of the church. The Babylonian 
captivity had many direct and indirect influences upon 
Israel's life, and one effect is seen in the realm of religion. 
From this time forward Israel is in subjection to foreign 
powers, one after the other, with only an occasional 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 261 

flash of liberty in the time of the Maccabean revolt. 
Civil government was represented by a hostile and hated 
foreign power, and this drove the people back upon their 
religious and national hopes and ideals. In a way, 
religion was represented by the people of Israel, Jehovah's 
people ; in a marked way, political power was represented 
by the foreign ruler, the alien to the commonwealth of 
Israel. It is true that the Hebrews did not appreciate the 
full significance of all this at the time, and did not for- 
mally think out the idea of the worshiping congregation 
as distinguished from the civil community. But, none 
the less, the germs of the idea are there, and this very 
fact furnished the first interpreters of Christ with a 
set of terms in which to set forth the new truths of 
Christianity. 

II. The Formation of the Christian Church. With the 
rise of Christianity in the world a new set of ideas 
developed, and a new order of life resulted. The Son 
of man came and lived his life in the world, gathering 
around himself a company of disciples who entered 
into his purposes and hopes. The Master plainly inti- 
mates that great changes are before men, and twice at 
least he indicates that new associations will be formed 
among them. But so far as we can see he drew up no 
constitution for the future society, and he gave no sys- 
tematic teaching concerning its officers and their func- 
tions. No rules of order are framed for the coming 
assembly, and no rubrics are outlined for the guidance 
of its worship. At length the leaders of the nation con- 
spired against the Master and secured his condemnation 
by the Roman governor. 

I. For a while after the crucifixion of Jesus it seemed 
that the company of disciples was about to disperse and 
return each to his home with the memory of a lost cause, 
but no plans for the future. But the good news of the 



262 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

resurrection, with Jesus' appearances, recalled the des- 
pondent ones, and brought them to Jerusalem again. In 
due time the promised Spirit came upon the company of 
waiting disciples, and they began to magnify the name 
of Christ. It was not long before this enthusiasm made 
these men bold witnesses for Christ, and caused allegiance 
to him to rank higher than obedience to the Jerusalem 
authorities. In a short time '' all the feelings of love 
and reverence for the nation, for the family, for friends, 
cherished in each individual soul, were now uprooted 
and transferred to Jesus and his followers " (Wernle, 
" Beginnings of Christianity," Vol. I, p. 128). 

It is interesting but useless to conjecture what might 
have been the fortunes of the church and the develop- 
ments of Christianity if the Jewish authorities had been 
more favorable to the new movement. At first the dis- 
ciples of Christ were regarded by them as sectaries; but 
before long they regarded them with grave suspicion ; as 
time went on this suspicion deepened into open hostility 
and hostility led to bitter persecution. This hostility 
drove the Christians together and intensified their bond 
of union. The very efforts put forth to break up this 
new movement were the very causes needed to develop 
the church and to complete and compact its organization. 
Very early the Jewish authorities resented the plain decla- 
rations of the apostolic preaching, and the time soon came 
when they forbade men to speak in the name of Jesus of 
Nazareth. The time came when these converts were com- 
pelled to decide in their allegiance between Jesus Christ 
and the Jewish State ; nor did they long hesitate. Bound 
together by a common devotion, and moved by a common 
hope for the kingdom, they found that this new bond 
took precedence over all other ties, and constituted them 
a new community. 

There was one other factor that deepened this cor- 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 263 

porate consciousness and forced the Christians to become 
separate. The time came when men outside the pale 
of Judaism knocked at the door of the church, and 
this brought a wliole set of new problems. These men 
had received the seal of the Spirit — the token of God's 
favor — and as they were accepted of God, they must be 
approved of men. It is not easy for us to realize the 
full gravity of this problem and to appreciate its whole 
significance. In its negative results it implied that the 
new bond of faith was stronger than the old bond of 
race, and this was revolutionary. In its positive results 
it made these believers into what we may call the Christian 
church. The early Christians who passed through these 
changes felt something of their significance, but one man, 
the most intensely Jewish in his upbringing and sym- 
pathies, the Apostle Paul, most clearly foresaw the out- 
come, and was the leader in the movement. In the most 
natural, and yet in the most inevitable, way the new 
organization was created. The logic of events brought 
the disciples face to face with new problems and oppor- 
tunities, and the wisdom of the Spirit enabled them to 
appoint new officers and to meet the demands as they 
emerged. Thus, by slow degrees, the new body was 
built up with a conscience and consciousness of its own, 
and with an organization and life distinct and definite. 
Little by little the new community assumed form and 
shape, and more and more it differentiated itself from the 
old civil community. More and more a corporate con- 
sciousness was unfolded, and by degrees the church 
assumed visible form and organic structure. 

2. In the course of time the church arose in the world 
and began its long process of historical development. 
There are some elements that are never found in a pure 
state in nature, but always in combination with some 
other substances. They have such an affinity for these 



264 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

other substances that it is with difficulty they can be 
separated at all. What we call Christianity is so vital 
that it can never be found apart from life itself ; it comes 
to us in life and it expresses itself through Hfe, and it 
cannot be separated from its human media. This being 
so, it is more or less subject to the chances and 
changes of our human thought and social development. It 
does not fall within the scope of my purpose to follow 
the development of that great ecclesiastical system bear- 
ing the name of Christ and claiming the exclusive priv- 
ileges of his name. We are concerned with the relations 
between this catholic church and the political State. 
" The most interesting side of the Christian consciousness 
of being a people is what may be termed, in the nar- 
rowest sense of the word, the political" (Harnack, 
p. 322). There are several items in this political con- 
sciousness of the Christian church that may be noticed. 

At first the early Christians took up a more or less 
negative attitude toward the State, and never sought 
to define the relations between themselves and it. They 
lived in the bright hope of the coming of the Lord when 
the world and all its institutions would pass away to 
give place to the kingdom of God and the reign of the 
Messiah. For the sake of peace and a good conscience 
they paid their taxes and obeyed magistrates, but beyond 
this they regarded the State with indifference. This 
attitude is marked all through the first century and far 
on into the second. On the part of the leaders of the 
church during all this time there was a careful effort 
to maintain friendly relations toward the State, and 
to urge one another as Christians to be in subjec- 
tion to civil rulers. Thus, Paul charges men to be 
subject to the powers that be, on the ground that 
they are ordained of God. The Apostle Peter expresses 
the same thought, and he makes honor paid the emperor 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 265 

a part of one's duty to God (i Peter 2 : 13). The First 
Epistle of Clement marks a new era in that it contains the 
first petition known to us " for all that are in authority 
upon earth ; that God may grant them health and wealth, 
and peace and concord." Other teachers charge Chris- 
tians to pray for the rulers, because it is only as there 
is peace and order in the State that Christians can 
practise their religion in tranquillity. With all this, how- 
ever, the rank and file of the people took up a negative 
attitude toward the State regarding it as at best a tempo- 
rary and passing institution. 

3. But the time came when the State assumed the 
offensive and drew the sword of persecution. It is 
needless, nor is there space, to enter upon a consideration 
of the causes of this persecution, but they were many 
and they were not all groundless. After a short panic 
in Nero's reign that was more personal than civil, 
the State settled down into a bitter warfare against the 
new religion, and for generations Christians had to 
endure its avowed and deadly hostility. With this 
changed attitude of the State toward the Church we may 
mark a change of attitude on the part of the church 
toward the Roman government. This is seen in the 
various apocalyptic writings which appeared from time 
to time, and which voiced an intense and yet concealed 
hostility to the civil powers. " The politics of the Jewish 
apocalyptic viewed the world-State as a diabolical State, 
and consecjuently took up a purely negative attitude 
toward it. This political view is plainly put in the 
Apocalypse of John, where it was corroborated by the 
Neronic persecution, the imperial claim for worship, 
and the Domitianic reign of terror" (Harnack, "Ex- 
pansion of Christianity," Vol. I, p. 323). It is not strange 
therefore that many of the leaders and members of the 
church should take up a suspicious attitude toward the 



266 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

State, and should even regard it as the empire of Satan. 
In various other writings of the first centuries we find 
divergent views, reflecting the local sentiment and the 
ever-changing attitude with reference to the State. The 
official attitude of many of the Christian leaders and 
apologetes was conciliatory and deferential, and an effort 
was made to show that Christians are not hostile to the 
powers that be. It must be said, however, that many of 
the great leaders and apologetes were not always con- 
sistent, and in their writings we find words which show 
a more pronounced suspicion of the State. This is seen 
in such a writing as the Epistle to Diognetus, belonging 
to the early decades of the second century, which declares 
that while Christians dwell in their own countries, yet 
they are simply as sojourners. " As citizens they share 
in all things with others, and yet endure all things as 
if foreigners." Thus also the Synod of Elvira a little 
later ruled that " whoever held the office of duumvir 
must, during his period of office, remain away from 
church." But this, it may be said, does not represent the 
better statesmanship of the church, which rather stood 
on the platform of conciliation. It is possible to accuse 
some of these leaders and members of insincerity and 
contradiction on account of their different views from 
time to time, but it is more just to say that their divergent 
views reflect rather their changing and manifold moods. 

And yet, withal, during these early centuries, we can 
detect a deeper note that is prophetic of great things to 
come. In Origen we find the beginning of a doctrine 
that is destined to reverse the Christian hope and give 
men a new conception of the State. In his reply to 
Celsus he asserts that the church, the universe of the 
universe, is the future kingdom of God, destined to em- 
brace the Roman empire and all humanity itself, to 
amalgamate and replace the various realms of this world. 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 267 

" The word of God will win its way, and all religions 
will vanish leaving that of Christ alone to reign. And 
reign it will one day, as the word never ceases to gain 
soul after soul" (''Against Celsus," Bk. VIII, chap. 
Ixviii). 

It may be — who can say ? — that some of the opposition 
and persecution encountered was necessary in order that 
the church might develop a self-consciousness and might, 
compact its life ; at any rate, so far as we can see, Chris- 
tianity would have failed utterly in its higher mission 
if too early it had won the favor of rulers and had come 
under the patronage of the State. 

4. The time came when the church, once an outlawed 
body, became a great compact organization with numbers, 
wealth, and influence. From this time forth it is an 
organization that must be reckoned with, and even 
emperors begin to treat it with respect. With the rise 
of the church to prominence and power there grew up 
the ambition to make it supreme over all human afifairs. 
And this ambition has behind it two very different mo- 
tives : one is the honor of Christ, the Head over all things ; 
and the other is the natural desire of men for place and 
power. The fortunes of the church are changed, and 
with this change in outward fortune there comes a 
change over the inner life as well. 

With the conversion of Constantine, as it may be called, 
the tendencies that were at work came to the surface, 
and we see the drift of things. The historian Gibbon is 
inclined to make light of this conversion, and does not 
hesitate to attribute Constantine's change of attitude to 
motives of public policy. Whatever may have been his 
motives his conduct was fraught with far-reaching con- 
sequences and produced very questionable results. 
Thomas Arnold does not hesitate to say that the pre- 
tended conversion of the kingdoms of the world to the 



268 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

kingdom of Christ in the fourth and fifth centuries *' I 
look upon as one of the greatest tours d'adresse that 
Satan ever played" (Life and Corres.," Vol. I, p. 59). 
And Doctor Boardman says, " The most ominous day 
the church ever saw was the day when Constantine the 
Great, having renounced heathenism, at least in part, 
proclaimed himself the imperial patron of Christianity 
and defender of the faith. That alliance of Church and 
State set back the church for centuries, and to this day 
she is reeling beneath the satanic stab she then received " 
(Boardman, " The Kingdom," p. 214). 

It was reserved for a later age, however, to follow out 
these tendencies to their full results, and then to seek to 
justify the new relation of Church and State. In course 
of time there grew up in the medieval world the theory 
that Christendom forms one great whole, and that there 
are two chief functionaries, the pope and the emperor, 
each in a different way its head. Each power is instituted 
by God, the one to rule over men's bodily, the other 
over their spiritual interests. " The pope, as God's vicar 
in matters spiritual, is to lead men to eternal life; the 
emperor, as vicar in matters temporal, must so control 
them in their dealings with one another, that they may be 
able to pursue undisturbed the spiritual life, and thereby 
attain the same supreme and common end of everlasting 
happiness" (Bryce, "Holy Roman Empire," p. 102). 
" This is the one perfect and self-consistent scheme of 
the union of Church and State. . . It is also the scheme 
which, granting the possibility of their harmonious action, 
places the two powers in that relation which gives each 
of them its maximum of strength " (Bryce, ihid., p. 104). 
But it is evident that when two rulers exist side by side, 
one or the other must have higher authority and final 
precedence. There were great minds in the church, 
such as Hildebrand and Alexander, who were content 



I 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 269 

to have the State yield obedience to the Church and fulfil 
its behests. " It was reserved for Boniface VIII, whose 
extravagant pretensions betrayed the decay that was 
already at work within, to show himself to the crowding 
pilgrims at the jubilee of A. D. 1300, seated on the throne 
of Constantine, arrayed with sword and crown and 
scepter, shouting aloud : ' I am Caesar ; I am emperor ' " 
(Bryce, ibid., p. 106). 

As might be expected, there was vigorous discussion 
over these growing claims, and while the advantage 
was now with the temporal power and now with the 
papacy, in the end the victory was usually with the 
Church. Pope Innocent IV claimed that, inasmuch as 
the Lord had committed to St. Peter the power of the 
keys, the apostle and his successors in office had control 
over all the spiritual and temporal affairs of the world. 
Not all the popes went to this length, but they one and 
all regarded the political sovereign as the right arm of 
their will, and they never hesitated to use that arm to put 
down opposition and to promote their own interests. The 
baleful effects of this alliance, both to the Church and 
the State, are writ large on the pages of history for all 
the world to read. 

III. The Separation of the Church From the State. 
To tell the whole story of the separation of Church and 
State, both in theory and in fact, would require a volume, 
and cannot be here attempted. However, to understand 
this whole question, we must keep in mind some of the 
principles of the Reformation, as defined in a previous 
chapter. 

From the time of Constantine, Church and State are 
in more or less close league and friendship, and each is 
found upholding the other in its projects. It must be 
said that many beneficent results grew out of this alliance, 
and the Church moved the State to issue many decrees 



270 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

that made for human betterment and social progress. 
But with it all, as Bryce shows, as the State became 
milder and more Christian, the Church, which had as- 
sumed a worldly form to work out its purposes, became 
more worldly and grew less regardful of the interests 
of the people. Throughout the Middle Ages the State 
was generally autocratic and irresponsible, and was used 
by the powerful and unjust to exploit the people and to 
further their own schemes. Little by little the govern- 
ments grew away from the people; one by one their 
privileges were taken from them; by degrees they were 
reduced to the condition of virtual vassalage and slavery. 
In Germany, in France, in Italy, in England, the same 
story is told — the commons claimed by the nobles and 
enclosed, the people reduced to serfdom, the rights of the 
people ignored, and their cries for redress scorned. 
Throughout the Middle Ages the Church itself became 
unspiritual and worldly, and the leaders of the Church, 
with few exceptions, vied with the rulers of the State in 
measures of oppression and spoliation. During all this 
time, with hardly an exception, the Church rulers sided 
with the civil rulers against the people, and employed 
the machinery of religion to keep them in submission. 
During the latter ages, when the power of the Catholic 
Church became supreme, the civil rulers lent their aid to 
suppress heresy and to compel the people to keep in the 
; Church fold. 

I. At various times, from the twelfth century onward, 
men and movements arise, now here, now there, in pro- 
test against all this. These movements have been looked 
upon as religious in spirit and aim, but while they were 
this they were no less political in the truest sense. The 
Waldensian movement in the Canton of the Vaud, the 
Wycliffe movement in England, the protest of Savon- 
arola in Florence, the Hussite movement in Bohemia, the 



I 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 2J\ 

Jacquerie in France, and the Peasants' war in Germany, 
were quite as much poHtical as rehgious, for they, one 
and all, voiced a protest against the corruptions of the 
Church and the usurpations of the State. And in all of 
these movements men sought relief from the wrongs they 
suffered at the hands of both these institutions. 

There were several causes that contributed to stir up 
the people to protest and revolt. For one thing, the 
wrongs endured had become unendurable and men felt 
that they had nothing to lose but their chains. Then, 
through the revival of learning, a new spirit of inquiry 
was abroad in the world, and many old forms and ideas 
began to be questioned and denied. Added to all this, 
and perhaps the most potent of all, the Scriptures were 
being translated into the language of the people, and 
men everywhere were beginning to sigh for that freedom 
which Christ had promised. The seed of the new age was 
sown in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and in 
the fifteenth and sixteenth the fruit began to appear. 
Two or three of the ancillary movements, making for the 
emancipation of both Church and State from the other's 
control, may be noted before we trace the main stream 
that flows ever onward. 

It is sometimes supposed that Protestantism means the 
separation of Church and State, but this is very far 
from the truth. Protestantism is the one force that has 
made for this end, and its service to human emancipation 
is simply incalculable. But while Protestantism has 
done much to break the alliance between the Roman 
Church and the political State, it has not always been 
true to its fundamental principles. The great Reformers, 
Luther and Calvin, Knox and Erasmus, denied the right 
of the Roman Church to employ the civil power to com- 
pel faith or to punish dissent, but these men never came 
out into the full light of the complete separation of 



2^2 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Church and State. The fact is Luther did not hesitate 
to appeal to the secular arm against the Anabaptists and 
others. Lutheranism has ever been associated with mon- 
archy and civil government ; in no land has it ever meant 
political democracy; where it prevails Church and State 
are in firm alliance to-day. The name of Calvin is gen- 
erally associated with a great system of theology; but 
the fact is Calvin was no less a statesman than a theo-^ 
logian. Calvinism, wherever it has appeared, whether in 
Switzerland or Scotland, has a theocratic tinge, and 
means the union, in part at least, of Church and State. 
Thus Calvin himself sought to establish a Christian 
commonwealth at Geneva, and for years he was its chief 
director. He drew up a Confession of Faith, which every 
citizen was required to sign, and thus Church and State 
were identical in their component members. In Scotland, 
since the time of Knox, Church and State have been more 
or less in union. The General Assembly asserted its 
" right to treat in an ecclesiastical way of greatest and 
smallest affairs, from the king's throne that should be 
established in righteousness, to the merchant's balance 
that should be used in faithfulness." In this land the 
free church movement has assumed large proportions, 
but it has not yet effected complete separation. In France 
an interesting chapter of history is being written. Here 
the various Churches are placed on an equal footing, so 
far as the State is concerned, and they can no longer 
impose civil disabilities upon men. From the side of the 
State separation is a fact both in theory and in practice ; 
but from the side of the Roman Catholic Church this 
separation is denounced and the papacy is in conspiracy 
against the republic. For a long time to come there is 
likely to be friction between Church and State in France. 
In the New England colonies the separation of Church 
and State was first achieved. But these colonies, with 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 2/3 

hardly an exception, were for a long time essentially 
theocratic, with Church and State in closest union. In 
the Massachusetts colonies, both Puritan and Pilgrim, 
none but members of the churches could be citizens of 
the State. The Puritans were less tolerant than the 
Pilgrims, and sought to exercise a virtual control over 
man's whole inner and outer life. The Puritan common- 
wealth was cast in an ecclesiastical mold, and was de- 
signed to uphold the framework of the Church. The 
Church framed the legislation of the State and the 
State enforced the discipline of the Church. " There 
never was a government where the civil power was more 
completely under the sway of the Church than in Massa- 
chusetts Bay" (Straus, "Roger Williams," p. 45). In 
1632 it was ordered that " To the end that the body of 
the commons be preserved of honest and good men. . . 
for the time to come no man shall be admitted to the 
freedom of the body politic but such as are members of 
some of the churches within the bounds of the same." 
The Pilgrims, while nonconformists Hke the Puritans, 
had gone much farther, and had separated themselves 
from the Established Church of England. Their varied 
experiences had carried them a long way toward religious 
toleration, and in their colony at Plymouth they showed 
a more tolerant spirit than their Puritan neighbors. In 
1645 3. majority of the House of Delegates were in favor 
of " an act to allow and maintain full and free toleration 
to all men who would preserve the civil peace and submit 
unto government; and there were no limitations or ex- 
ceptions against, Turk, Jew, Papist, Arian, Socinian, 
Nicolaitan, Familist, or any other " ; but the governor 
refused to put the question, and so stifled the law 
(Bancroft, " History of U. S.," Vol. I, p. 214). In all of 
these colonies Dissenters suffered some disabilities, and 
this condition of things continued down to a late date in 
s 



274 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

many of the American States ; in fact, it was generations 
before the last trace of union was removed and Church 
and State were finally separated. 

We must now turn back to follow the main stream 
that makes for the complete separation of Church and 
State in theory and in practice. 

2. As we have seen, among the peoples of Germany and 
the Tyrol, there began a splendid movement in behalf of 
religious liberty. In 1524 the Anabaptists of Swabia 
drew up a declaration of principles that are prophetic of 
great things to come. These articles, which Hubmaier 
admitted under torture he had revised, declare that 
" Every commune has the right to choose its own pastor, 
who ought to teach the truth of God without human ad- 
ditions." In these significant articles there is the begin- 
ning of the doctrine of the complete separation of Church 
and State. These Anabaptists were ruthlessly suppressed 
throughout Germany, and many of the leaders, such as 
Hiibmaier and Denck, suffered at the hands of the civil 
rulers. In the Netherlands, however, these people found 
somewhat more congenial conditions, and William of 
Orange openly defended them (Motley, "The United 
Netherlands," Vol. I, chap ii). Some of these Ana- 
baptists sought refuge in England, and settled in the 
southern and eastern counties. In 161 1 some English 
Baptists who had returned to Amsterdam promulgated a 
Confession, or declaration of faith, in which this article 
occurs : 

" The magistrate is not to meddle with religion or 
matters of conscience, nor to compel men to this or 
that form of religion; because Christ is the King and 
Lawgiver of the church and conscience." 

" It is believed that this is the first expression of the 
absolute principle of liberty of conscience In the public 
articles of any body of Christians" (Masson, "Life of 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 2/5 

Milton/' Vol. Ill, p. Id). This principle, it may be said, 
was the common heritage of the Baptists, whether on the 
continent or in England. For, in 1614, Leonard Busher, 
citizen of London, put forth a little tract on " Religious 
Peace, or a Plea for Liberty of Conscience." This, says 
Masson, is the earHest known English publication in 
which full liberty of conscience is openly advocated, and 
no one can read it even now without an inspiring thrill 
{ibid., p. 102). This was followed the next year by a 
dialogue, " wherein it is proved by the law of God, by 
the law of our land, and by his majesty's many testi- 
monies, that no man ought to be persecuted for his 
religion, so he testifie his allegiance by the oath appointed 
by law." This treatise by Murton was doubtless familiar 
to Roger Williams before going to America, but it was 
well known to him at a later time, for in his " Bloudy 
Tenent," he quotes largely from it. Thus Masson, than 
whom there is no more authoritative writer, declares: 
" Not to the Church of England, nor to Scottish Presby- 
terianism, nor to English Puritanism at large, does the 
honor of the first perception of the full liberty of con- 
science and its first assertion in English speech belong. 
That honor has to be assigned, I believe, to the independ- 
ents generally, and to the Baptists in particular (Masson 
" Life of Milton," Vol. Ill, p. 99). 

In 163 1 Roger Williams came to America to take 
charge of the Puritan church in Boston. He came 
to Massachusetts expecting to find the largest liberty in 
matters of religion, but he soon discovered that the 
government of the colony was most rigidly theocratic, 
with the civil government strictly subordinate to the 
ecclesiastical. Williams, though not yet a Baptist, held 
the Baptist idea with reference to the separation of 
Church and State, and he could hence ill brook this 
religious despotism. " I came from England to escape the 



276 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

tyranny of the Lords Bishops, he said, and I do not in- 
tend to subject myself to the tyranny of the Lords 
Brethren." Church and State, he maintained, should 
be separate and independent, and the magistrate has 
nothing to do with matters of conscience. In July, 1635, 
he was summoned to Boston to answer the charges 
brought against him at the general court, which was then 
in session. He was accused of maintaining the danger- 
ous opinion, 

"That the magistrate ought not to punish the breach 
of the first table, otherwise than in such cases as dis- 
turb the civil peace " (Straus, " Roger Williams," p. 49)- 
But Williams utterly refused to recant, and stoutly mam- 
tained his ground. In October he was again summoned, 
not to be retried, but to be sentenced, unless he would 
retract. Failing to move him, the general court then 
pronounced the sentence of banishment, and ordered 
him to leave the colony. In the dead of winter, m 
January, 1636, Williams secretly and in haste departed 
from Salem, leaving behind him his wife and children, 
and began his perilous exile alone, to seek a refuge 
from the tyranny of the church brethren. Some months 
later he was joined by a few companions, and together 
they sought an abode beyond the Massachusetts colony. 
Coasting along the shore they entered the Mooshausick 
River and landed at a place to which, in gratitude to 
" God's merciful providence to him in his distress," he 
gave the name of Providence. Here Williams founded 
a colony, in whose original compact, as Jellinek says, 
" for the first time was recognized the most unrestricted 
liberty of religious conviction." Some years afterward a 
more definite guarantee was given, and It was provided : 
" We agree, as formerly hath been the liberties of the 
town so still, to hold forth liberty of conscience" 
rStaole's " Annals," p. 40). Thus, the first apostle of the 



I 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 277 

inherent and sacred rights of the individual conscience 
was " not Lafayette, but Roger WilHams, who, driven 
by a powerful but deep religious enthusiasm, went into 
the wilderness in order to frame a government of re- 
ligious liberty " ( Jellinek, " Rights of Man and the 
Citizen," p. 'j'j). The city of Providence, in recent 
times, has erected a statue to the memory of Roger 
Williams in grateful acknowledgment of his services to 
the cause of humanity. Williams, who is represented as 
about to speak in an assembly of the people, holds in his 
left arm a book, which he presses against his breast; 
on the cover may be read a date and two words, " Soul 
liberty." In this date and in these words we may sum 
up the glory of Providence and of the republic of which 
he was the founder. 

3. The principle of soul liberty with the entire sepa- 
ration of Church and State, yet made its way very slowly 
in the other colonies. In many of them, however, there 
were men who believed most firmly in liberty of con- 
science, and were willing to endure affliction for truth's 
sake. In 1770 the Baptists of Virginia presented a peti- 
tion to the house of burgesses remonstrating against 
the wrongs to which they were subjected, and praying 
for relief. James Madison and Patrick Henry defended 
the petitioners and did all in their power to secure them 
consideration and justice. It is also a matter of record 
that Thomas Jefferson was friendly to the Baptists. In 
1774, James Madison, writing to a friend in Phikdelphia, 
said : " That diabolical, hell-conceived principle of perse- 
cution rages among some, and to their eternal infamy 
the clergy can furnish their quota of imps for such pur- 
poses. There are at the present time in the adjacent 
county not less than five or six well-meaning men in 
close jail for proclaiming their religious sentiments, 
which are in the main quite orthodox." 



2y% THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

But the Massachusetts colony was not one whit behind 
Virginia in its severity toward dissenters, and the early an- 
nals of that State record how Baptists and Quakers were 
flogged and distrainedand imprisoned for conscience' sake. 
In 1774 the Baptists of New England drew up a memorial 
praying for relief from the oppressive measures to which 
they were subjected. This memorial contains a ringing 
manifesto of the doctrine of soul liberty, and opens with 
these memorable words : " It has been said by a cele- 
brated writer in politics that but two things are worth 
contending for — religion and liberty. For the latter 
we are at present nobly exerting ourselves through all 
this extensive continent; and surely no one whose bosom 
feels the patriotic glow in behalf of civil liberty can 
remain torpid to the more ennobling flame of religious 
liberty," Then follows the statement that the inalienable 
rights of conscience are too high and sacred to be sub- 
jected to fallible legislators inasmuch as '' this dignity 
belongs to God alone." Then follows also an account of 
the disabilities they have endured throughout the colony, 
with an appeal for relief and justice. This memorial, 
signed by John Gano, moderator, and Hezekiah Smith, 
clerk, was sent by the hand of Isaac Backus to be pre- 
sented to the Continental Congress then meeting in 
Philadelphia. Then the war of the Revolution came on, 
and for a time all such questions were in abeyance. 

After the Revolution came what has been called the 
critical period of United States history. The old articles 
of federation were found unsatisfactory, and a conven- 
tion assembled in Philadelphia to take thought for the 
common safety. After weeks of debate and delay a 
constitution was framed that must be regarded as one of 
the great documents of the world. But many of the 
Baptist leaders who had all along been so insistent on 
soul liberty felt that it did not sufficiently guarantee this. 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 279 

Patrick Henry even denounced the Constitution in that 
it had a monarchical squint and contained no guarantee 
of rehgious liberty. The Baptists generally accepted 
the Constitution, but none the less they felt that it should 
be amended in one respect at least; and throughout the 
country organizations were formed for the purpose of 
so amending it as to provide complete religious liberty. 
On Madison's election to the lower House he was con- 
sulted by a deputation of Baptists wanting to know what 
they must do in order to obtain some action on this ques- 
tion. Madison advised them to consult General Washing- 
ton, which they did in an address entitled, " An Address 
of the Commissioners of the United Baptist Churches of 
Virginia, Assembled in the City of Richmond, August 
8, 1789, to the President of the United States of 
America." In President Washington's reply he assured 
the petitioners of his sincere appreciation of their expres- 
sion of confidence and promised to use his best endeavors 
to promote their prosperity (James, " The Struggle for 
Religious Liberty," pp. 173, 174). Within a month of 
this time James Madison, with the approval and concur- 
rence of President Washington, brought in several 
amendments to the Constitution, and himself moved the 
adoption of " Article L Congress shall make no law re- 
specting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the 
free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech 
or of the press ; or the right of the people peaceably to 
assemble and to petition the government for a redress of 
grievances." 

For a century and more the United States stood prac- 
tically alone in its assertion of this principle ; but France 
has recently taken the final step to ensure the total sepa- 
ration of Church and State. In many lands a practical 
toleration of all faiths is permitted, but none the less 
there is some kind of union. In all enlightened lands, 



28o THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

however, the drift is plain, and the separation of Church 
and State is only a matter of time. 

IV. The Relation of Church and State. Many at- 
tempts have been made, first and last, to define their 
relations, to find some modus vivendi, and to effect some 
compromise between these two great powers. No inquiry 
could be more fundamental and practical than this, for 
upon its right solution depend not only the peace and 
prosperity of the Church, but the life and perpetuity of 
the State. The time has come surely for men to con- 
sider the essential elements in the relations between these 
two powers, and then to adjust these relations in reason 
and right. It may be said that the attempted solutions 
of this question of the relation of Church and State have 
not by any means proved fully satisfactory, and this leads 
us to believe that there are certain factors that have been 
more or less ignored. There must be some positive re- 
lation that is both conceivable and possible, and this posi- 
tive relation we must endeavor to find. A few consider- 
ations in behalf of this is all that can be here offered. 

There are several possible relations that may exist 
between the Church and the State, and all of these find 
illustration in whole or in part in some age or place. 
There is first, the sovereignty of the one over the other, 
with the subordination of the one to the other. There is 
the union of the two in some form, with certain legal 
and formal conventions and agreements. There is the 
complete separation of the two, both in form and in 
spirit, with each keeping to its own province and making 
no formal recognition of the other. There is what may 
be called the higher unity of the two, with both co- 
operating, each in its own way toward a common end, and 
with the most friendly relations. And there is another 
possible conception, the gradual merging of the two 
in some larger whole, in which each shall lose its identity 



I 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 281 

and both shall find fulfilment in the perfected kingdom 
of humanity. The first three views are more or less 
historical and actual; the last two represent the goal 
toward which our humanity is making. 

I. Sovereignty and subordination. There are those, as 
Hobbes, who maintain that the State should be sovereign 
in religion no less than in civil matters, and so far as 
there is any church at all, it should be under State con- 
trol. This is State Csesarism and, while it may have been 
possible under ancient forms of religion, it is simply im- 
possible where Christianity is known. A church that is 
organized upon Christian principles, a church that ac- 
knowledges Jesus Christ as its Lord and life, cannot con- 
cede the sovereignty of the State in matters of faith and 
conscience; this far at least it must be independent. 

The reverse of this view is found in the Roman Catholic 
conception, which asserts the virtual sovereignty of the 
Church over the State. The Romanist upholds this 
relation on the plea that the Lord Jesus is the one sole 
and supreme head over all things in heaven and on earth. 
But the church is created to represent him, and the pope 
as the head of the church is his vicar to govern in his 
name. Hence it follows that the church must be supreme 
and must have some headship over the State. This posi- 
tion of the Catholic Church is made plain in various dec- 
larations, in bulls and encyclicals. Thus Pope Pius IX, 
in his encyclical letter, December 8, 1864, anathematized 
" Those who assert the liberty of conscience and of 
religious worship " ; also " All such as maintain that the 
Church may not use force." Li a sermon preached 
when he was archbishop, Cardinal Manning puts into the 
mouth of the pope these significant words: " I acknowl- 
edge no civil power ; I am the subject of no prince ; and 
I claim more than this : I claim to be the supreme judge 
and director of the consciences of men ; of the peasant 



282 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

that tills the field, and of the prince that sits upon the 
throne ; of the household that lives in the shade of privacy, 
and the legislator that makes laws for kingdoms. I am 
the sole, last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong." 
The Catholic claim, it is evident, is really the subordi- 
nation of the State to the Church, rather than a union of 
Church and State. 

In this Catholic view the church and the kingdom of 
God are practically synonomous terms and conterminous 
realms. They who are in the church are in the king- 
dom, and vice versa. Nullus salus extra Ecclesiam. 
There is no salvation outside of the Church. The king- 
dom of God is supreme over all human affairs, and as the 
church is the kingdom, at least in its human form, the 
church should be supreme over all human relations. The 
Catholic is logical at least in his argument, and granting 
his premises there is no escape from his conclusion. 

2. The union of Church and State. The various 
Protestant bodies that advocate the union of Church and 
State adduce other reasons, and these are worthy of care- 
ful consideration. It is not an easy question to decide 
who shall be spokesmen, for many clear-sighted thinkers 
have dealt with this question, and while they agree in 
the main they differ widely in details. Perhaps no better 
representatives of the more moderate Protestant view can 
be found than Thomas Arnold and Bishop Martensen, 
though in saying this one seems to ignore such men as 
Hooker and Whately, Coleridge and Gladstone, Maurice 
and Westcott. But with it all these two may be taken as 
representatives of the higher and more Christian view 
of union. Thus Arnold saw, what many others have seen, 
that no State can long prosper and endure without re- 
ligion ; he protested also and most vigorously against the 
false distinction between secular and sacred things, as this 
distinction is accentuated by those who advocate the 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 283 

separation of Qiurch and State; and he counseled all 
sovereigns, magistrates, and legislators to regard them- 
selves as functionaries of the Christian church. Further, 
he saw that there must be some sovereign power in 
society, and by the nature of the case there cannot be 
two sovereign powers ; in so far as there are two powers 
each claiming to be sovereign, that far we have conflict. 
And so he pleaded for the identification of Christian 
with political society as the only mode of reconciling their 
differences and of bringing society to its true goal 
("Fragments on Church and State; Life," Vol. I, p. 
204). 

Martensen believed very strongly in the Christian 
State, and no less strongly that the Christian Church is 
necessary for the existence and the perfection of the 
State. He protested against the false notions of individ- 
ualism and found in them the destruction of both religion 
and society. " They who advocate a free church, by 
desiring only a flock of awakened and regenerate men, 
abandon the great multitude of the young and ignorant 
who, unless some one takes them up, fall a prey to irre- 
ligion and all kinds of error." He would therefore have 
a State Church, which should represent all, which should 
claim all for the kingdom of right and truth, which should 
place all under the influence of tradition and authority, 
and should represent the kingdom of God on earth 
(Martensen, "Ethics, Social," Sec. 152-156). 

The verdict of history upon the union of Church and 
State in any form or fashion does not speak in its favor. 
The more fully we study its historical aspects the more 
clearly do we see that it has resulted disastrously for 
both. It has meant the perversion of government from 
its rightful ends and its employment in behalf of meas- 
ures that lay beyond its real purpose. It has meant the 
secularization of the church and its pursuit of ends 



284 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

that lie beyond its true scope. The day the State became 
allied with the Church, that day it began to proscribe men 
for their opinions and to use its civil authority to guide 
their faith. In course of time inquisitions are built and 
prisons are filled with the best and bravest ; through all 
the Middle Ages we find Church and State in league 
to suppress free thought and to forbid all dissent. " Half 
the wars of Europe, half the internal troubles that have 
vexed European States, from the Monophysite contro- 
versies in the Roman empire of the fifth century down to 
the Kulturkampf in the German empire of the nineteenth, 
have arisen from theological differences, or from the 
rival claims of Church and State " (Bryce, " The Ameri- 
can Commonwealth," Vol. II, p. 554). 

This is not all. The day that the Church became 
allied with the State, that day the State began to exert 
a repressive influence upon the Church, and that day the 
Church began to lower its standards to suit the con- 
venience of the State. The Church was dependent upon 
the State for favors, and these favors were conditioned 
upon the Church's friendliness toward the powers that 
be. Under such circumstances the Church became the 
defender of the State. It became a silent witness of 
grave oppression where it did not openly defend it. 
Through all the Middle Ages there runs the same mo- 
notonous and doleful tale— the churches uniting with 
the nobility against the poor and defenseless and employ- 
ing the machmery of religion to keep them submissive. 
The clergy admitted to a share of the wealth of the 
nobles, too often became the supporters of the nobles 
against the wronged and oppressed. It matters little 
what qualifying word is used, whether Romanist, Lu- 
theran, Greek, or English Church, the same condition 
obtains and the same charge may be preferred. To-day 
in all lands where these Churches have long held sway, 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 285 

we behold the same sad spectacle of the deep and bitter 
ahenation of the people from the State Church. In Italy, 
in Spain, in France, in Russia, in Germany, and in Eng- 
land, we are confronted with the same momentous result. 
Because of this alliance with the State the Church has lost 
its power of testifying for God's kingdom and its right- 
eousness, and has too often become the subsidized de- 
fender of the government in its schemes of spoliation 
and oppression. In view of the facts one is justified in 
saying that this union of Church and State is little else 
than the crime and blunder of the ages. 

x\nd the very argument that Is advanced in favor of 
the alliance of Church and State breaks down in face of 
the actual facts. Thus, in lands where there is an Estab- 
lished Church, it is found that the Church is not at all 
conspicuous for its fidelity in shepherding the common 
people ; indeed, quite the reverse is the case. For a 
thousand years and more the Church has been dominant 
in Italy, Spam, France, and Russia, and the amount of 
illiteracy in these countries is alarmingly great, while the 
moral life of the people is deplorably low. The condition 
of things, even in England and Germany, is not such 
as to admit of much boasting on the part of churchmen. 
From every point of view the union of Church and State 
has been attended with unfortunate consequences to 
both. It has not by any means made for the welfare of 
man or the progress of society, and contains little promise 
for the future. 

3. The separation of the Church and the State. In 
modern times we find a large body of men who oppose the 
union of Church and State in any form. They maintain 
that either the subordination of the one to the other or 
the union of the two in any form is wholly unsatisfactory, 
in theory and application. They hence demand the entire 
seoaration of Church and State, and insi.st that there 



286 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

shall be no alliance between them. Since we find differ- 
ent classes of persons demanding this separation, though 
from very different motives and with very different 
reasons, it is not easy to give a brief statement of this 
view. Thus Christians and unbeHevers both advocate the 
same theory; and the agreement of parties so diverse is 
well calculated to occasion serious thought on the part of 
Christians themselves. Irreligious men demand the sep- 
aration of the Church from the State on the ground that 
religion is a private matter, and that the State is best 
governed without any religious interference. In the 
name of religion men demand this separation on the plea 
that the union of the Church with the State is hurtful to 
the cause of true religion, and that it diverts the State 
from its proper functions. 

It may be said that many of those Christians who 
advocate the separation of Church and State, do so on 
the ground that the church and the kingdom of God 
are practically synonymous terms. But they go farther 
than either the Romanist or the Protestant in their con- 
ception of the kingdom, and construe the term in its nar- 
rowest significance. With many of them the church, which 
is equivalent to the kingdom of God, is the one sacred realm 
of life, and all the other interests that lie beyond this 
realm lie practically outside of the kingdom. That 
sacred and divine things may be kept apart from secular 
and human things the church must be separated from the 
State. Not all Christians who advocate complete sepa- 
ration would agree to this statement; and many of those 
who believe most strongly in this separation have never 
thought their view through in all its bearings and im- 
plications. But the time has come for men to give a 
reason for their views, and to advocate the separation of 
Church and State for Christian reasons. Not one of the 
views thus far considered is wholly satisfactory, and not 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 287 

yet have we found the real Christian reason for sepa- 
ration, nor the true relation between these two great 
divine institutions. 

4. The Kingdom, the Church, and the State. We 
have seen that the subordination of the Church to the 
State is objectionable from every point of view, and can- 
inot be admitted for a moment. The subordination of the 
State to the Church is no less objectionable, and impos- 
sible in these latter days. We have seen that the union of 
Church and State, in any form, is not satisfactory, and 
more and more men are growing away from this concep- 
tion. We have seen also that the separation of Church 
and State, where such separation means suspicion and 
friction, where two great institutions exist side by side 
without any recognition on the part of either of the 
other's presence, is no less unsatisfactory and unchris- 
tian. It is admitted that the dualistic conception of life 
is not satisfactory, with the Church and the State each 
claiming authority over separate spheres; for life cannot 
be broken up in this fashion, and humanity cannot live 
under such a divided kingship without suffering irrep- 
arable loss in moral and spiritual power. Nor can it be 
claimed that we have found the final solution of the prob- 
lem when we have established the free Church in the 
free State, for in such cases the boundaries of the two 
institutions are never clearly delimited and a hundred 
and one questions of jurisdiction are certain to arise. 
What we need, therefore, it is evident, is some concep- 
tion of human society which shall include both the Church 
and the State, some great synthesis which shall show the 
relation of the one to the other and bring them into har- 
mony. The controversies and conflicts between the two 
can never be ended by the conquest of the one by the 
other, but the submission of both to the whole of which 
they are only parts. 



288 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

This larger whole, this great synthesis, Christians be- 
lieve, is given to men in the great ideal of the kingdom 
of God. In these latter times they have begun to con- 
sider, as never before, this master thought of Jesus' 
teaching, and it is breaking upon them almost as a new 
revelation. It has become plain that the idea of the 
kingdom of God is a great all-comprehensive idea that 
defines the whole purpose of God for this world; it has 
become plain also, that the kingdom of God is a great 
social synthesis that includes within its scope the whole 
life of man. In this kingdom are included all his rela- 
tions and institutions; and in it every man and every 
institution have their appropriate place and work. The 
three great institutions of men's life, the family, the 
Church, and the State, are all so many realms in which 
the life of the kingdom seeks expression and realization. 
These cover the entire range of human life, and their 
perfection implies the perfection of mankind. Each has 
its own functions to fulfil, though all co-operate toward 
the one common end. The kingdom of God, the divine 
ideal and human synthesis, includes all of these institu- 
tions ; and these institutions are created and designed that 
they may seek the kingdom of God. Of each the Hfe 
of the kingdom is the vitalizing and creative life ; of each 
the principles of the kingdom are the great informing, 
constitutive, and architectonic ideas. Through each of 
these institutions some aspect of the kingdom is revealed 
and some interest of the kingdom is served ; through all of 
these institutions together the whole life of man is blessed 
and the whole purpose of God is fulfilled. 

The Church and the State are both institutions of the 
kingdom, and as such each has a work to do, and both 
sustain a vital relation to one another. The most stu- 
pendous and tragic blunder of the ages has been the 
confounding of the kingdom and the church, with the 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 289 

claim of the church to be the kingdom of God. The 
kingdom is the larger category, and it alone is the final 
and eternal thing. All of the meaning of this great 
truth we cannot here consider, but in the conception of the 
kingdom of God, we are confident, is to be found the 
determination of the relation of Church and State. 

5. The unity of the Church and the State in the king- 
dom. In the light of this great synthesis we find several 
things for our guidance. 

The relations of the Church and the State are sug- 
gested by the very nature of the institutions themselves. 
The Church differs from the State in its nature and con- 
stitution. The church is a voluntary society made up of 
those who freely and fully make choice of Christ and ac- 
cept membership in it. No man is a member of any 
church by virtue of his natural birth; in every church 
membership in the body is a matter of profession or of 
faith. Thus membership in the church is voluntary from 
beginning to end; continuance in the church and obedi- 
ence to its teachings are matters of personal choice. The 
State, however, is a more or less natural institution, whose 
citizens are born within its territory and are subject to 
its jurisdiction. Citizenship in the State and obedience 
to its laws are thus in nowise dependent upon the volun- 
tary act of man. By virtue of his birth one may claim 
his place; and by virtue of its nature the State may 
claim authority in all things that aflfect its life. 

Again, the relations of Church and State are made 
evident by considering them with reference to their 
spheres and aims. The church has to do primarily with 
thoughts, motives, and affections, the moral and spiritual 
nature of man, and it accomplishes its best results by 
the use of moral and spiritual means. The State has to do 
primarily with external conditions; with the civil and 
social life of man; and may employ means to further 

T 



290 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

these interests. The reign of God includes the rule of 
Csesar, and the rule of Cxsar should recognize the reign 
of God. With the things of God, with matters of con- 
science and questions of belief, Csesar has nothing to do 
except so far as they lead to outward acts and unsocial 
conduct. The citizen whose outward Ufe is above re- 
proach may say to the civil ruler who would constrain in 
such matters : Whether it be right in the sight of God to 
hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye; but 
we cannot but think and speak the things we deem true. 
Into the inner sanctuary of conscience where God and 
man meet, the civil magistrate dares not enter ; there alone 
with God the soul must decide its course. The very 
nature of religion is travestied when Church or State 
seeks to enforce its opinions to compel the conscience 
and overpower the will. The very nature of the moral 
and spiritual life implies the soul's freedom. In all the 
world, says Kant, there is nothing that can be called un- 
conditionally good except the good will; and the will is 
good in so far as it is free. 

The Church and the State can best serve mankind and 
help one another by each being true to its own mission 
and each following its own method. Thus, with the 
particular policies of the churches, with their internal 
administration and discipline, the State has nothing to do. 
With questions of doctrine and worship, with the organ- 
ization of the churches, with their officers and their suc- 
cession, the State has no concern. For these matters lie 
wholly within the range of the individual conscience and 
spiritual administration, and the government as such has 
no obligation in such spheres. And on the other hand, 
with the particular policies of the State, with questions 
of administration and method, the churches have nothing 
to do. With poHtical platforms and reform programmes 
the churches have no concern. But with the conscience 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 29I 

back of platforms, with the spirit finding expression in 
reforms, the churches have everything to do, and they 
neglect a large part of their mission when they neglect 
these things. The peculiar province of the church is the 
moral and spiritual nature of man ; its special sphere is 
the conscience and the will ; its method of work is in- 
struction and persuasion ; and its crown of glory is fallen 
into the dust when it descends from its throne and 
contemns its own methods. 

6. Thus in the relation of each institution to the king- 
dom of God we see the relation between these institutions 
themselves. It is evident that both Church and State are 
subordinate to the kingdom, and so neither can be sub- 
ordinate to the other without disloyalty to the great 
ideal for which they both exist. They who have claimed 
the subordination of the State to the Church have done 
so in the name of Jesus Christ. But it is strange that 
they have not seen the arrogance of their claim. Jesus 
Christ, the Christian believes, is head over all things, 
both principalities and powers, and it is a colossal assump- 
tion for any man or institution to claim headship for him. 
We could as easily tolerate a State supremacy over the 
Church as a Church supremacy over the State. The fact 
is the church itself is subordinate to Christ, and has no 
warrant for assuming lordship over the other spheres of 
life. The Romanist is eternally right when he claims 
that the State must be subordinate to Christ, and must 
seek his kingdom in the world ; but he is as eternally 
wrong when he claims that Christ has delegated his 
authority to another, be that a man or an institution. The 
Protestant is eternally right when he demands the sepa- 
ration of Church and State in the interests of both, but 
he is as eternally wrong when he construes this separation 
to mean the divorce of religion from civil affairs and the 
abandonment of the State as a secular institution. The 



292 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

fact is the age-long conflict between these institutions 
will cease and they will learn to live together in peace in 
the unity of the spirit, when each learns that it is here to 
serve the common life, and both begin to co-operate in 
behalf of man's social progress. In administration each is 
independent of the other, and neither should seek to con- 
trol the other's machinery. The subordination of the 
Church to the State means the loss of spiritual freedom » 
and authority on the part of the church; and the soui 
loses the sense of accountability to God in its subjection 
to the human power. The subordination of the State to^ 
the Church leads invariably to the secularization of the 
church, and means grave danger to the higher liberties 
of conscience. The devotion of each institution to the 
one great ideal of the kingdom of God on earth — 
though they may seek that kingdom by different methods 
— unites both institutions in many common enterprises 
and promotes a feeling of friendship between them. It 
may be that the time is coming when the Church and the 
State will gradually merge into each other, and that each 
will lose its identity in the perfected kingdom of hu- 
manity. The seer foretells the time when the kingdoms 
of this world shall become the kingdom of our God and 
of his Christ. And the same seer beholds the city of 
God that comes down to earth, and declares that he saw 
no temple therein. 

In conclusion, we find that the State, in order to be free, 
to make progress and fulfil its true functions, has had 
to separate itself from the church. And the church, in 
order to live its true life, to do its work and serve the 
higher interests of man, has had to free itself from the 
State and its dominion. But Church and State have 
become thus differentiated in form and function that they 
may become truly complementary institutions and may at- 
tain the higher unity of the spirit. In a word Church and 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 293 

State attain a separate and distinct life, with each reah- 
zing its true functions in the world, yet with both co- 
operating toward the one end, in order that both may 
find their higher unity in the spirit and may together 
seek the kingdom of God. 



XII 

THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 

IN all ages and lands religion has been the potent factor 
in human life, and the central feature of human his- 
tory. The chief fact with regard to a man, says Carlyle, 
is his religion. A comparison of beliefs and laws, says 
Fustel De Coulanges, will show that religion constituted 
not alone the Greek and Roman family, but formed a 
still larger association, the city, and reigned in that as it 
had reigned in the family. From it came all the institu- 
tions as well as all the private law of the ancients. It 
was from this that the city received all its principles, its 
rules, its usages, and its magistracies ("The Ancient 
City," p. 12). In religion, says Benjamin Kidd, we have 
the characteristic feature of social evolution; and the 
history of our Western civilization is largely but the life- 
history of a particular form of religion, and of wide- 
extending and deep-seated social movements connected 
therewith (" Social Evolution," chap. iv). " The truth is," 
says Professor Seeley, " that religion is and always has 
been, the basis of societies and States. It is no mere 
philosophy, but a practical view of life which whole com- 
munities live by. . . From history we learn that the great 
function of religion has been the founding and sustain- 
ing of States. And at this moment we are threatened with 
a general dissolution of States from the decay of religion " 
("Natural Religion," pp. 201, 202). This means that 
the kind and quality of a people's religion will both create 
and determine their social and political institutions. And 
this means that the decay and degeneration of a people's 
294 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 295 

social and civil life can be traced back to the decline and 
decay of their religion. In view of all this the question 
of this chapter is probably the most vital that can engage 
our attention. 

It is unfortunate that this larger question of the State 
and its religion has, in these Western lands in modern 
times, been narrowed down to the smaller one of the 
relation of Church and State. This latter question has 
played an important part in the history of political 
thought ; and it promises to play an even more important 
part in the drama of the future. In the United States 
and France a temporary solution and a working modus 
Vivendi have been discovered. But it is evident to all 
careful observers that the present relation is not by any 
means the solution of the problem, and the last word on 
the question has not been spoken. 

It is unfortunate also that this smaller question of the 
relation of Church and State has had such a variety of 
answers in Western Christendom. For one thing, this 
whole movement in behalf of liberty of conscience and 
the separation of Church and State, has been largely 
negative in character. In fact, the entire democratic 
movement, as we have seen, has been in a marked degree 
a negative movement, and being such it has not had its 
perfect work. In this struggle for emancipation, liberty 
has appeared rather as a pioneer than as a builder; and 
though it has voiced a protest, it has not preached a 
gospel. For liberty that means simply the assertion of 
one's rights against another man's claims is only a half- 
truth, and must be supplemented by the other truth of the 
recognition of one's duties to man and to society. So also 
the principle of the separation of Church and State has 
had a negative application, and hence falls short of the 
Christian ideal. Too often it has meant suspicion and 
protest on the part of these two institutions as against 



296 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

each other. Such an attitude is both misleading and 
dangerous, and cannot be the final thing. In protest 
against the evils and errors of the union of Church and 
State — evils that cannot be exaggerated, and errors the 
most pernicious — men are in danger of going to extremes 
and of living by negatives. 

For another thing, the separation of Church and State, 
with many, has meant the divorce of religion from civil 
and social affairs. From the side of religion and from 
that of politics men have taken this view. They have 
said that religion is wholly a personal matter, and has 
to do with the inward and spiritual hfe; at least, it is 
concerned with the relation between God and man, and 
has nothing to do with secular concerns. Others have 
said that the State is wholly a secular institution with its 
own life and work; and it can best fulfil its mission and 
promote social well-being without any reference to 
religion. No mistake, it may be said, could be more fatal 
than this, both from the side of religion and from the side 
of the State ; and no policy could lead to more disastrous 
results both in State and in Church. 

For a third thing, this question of the separation of 
Church and State, with all its incidental questions, has 
brought us face to face with one of the most serious 
dangers that can threaten a people. In the lands where 
this separation has been effected it is found that the 
religious world is broken into different Churches and 
organizations. These bodies have their own views of truth 
and their own interests to serve, and each is more or less 
suspicious of the others. On this account it is found im- 
possible to secure any unity of action in religious educa- 
tion and social reform. There is an imminent danger, as 
Sir Oliver Lodge shows, lest the nation in despair of 
any happier settlement of this question, should consent to 
a system of compulsory secularism, and forbid in the 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 297 

schools any mention of a Supreme Being. And '' if so 
ghastly a negation is brought about by the warfare of 
denominationalism, it will be a most lamentable result " 
(" The Substance of Faith," p. iv). In view of all this it 
is necessary that men deal with this larger question 
involved in the problem, and consider the place of religion 
,in the life of the State. But in order to do this we must 
know something of the nature of religion itself, and espe- 
cially of that form known as the religion of Christ. In 
much of the discussion of this mooted question there lurks 
a serious error, due largely to the fact that neither party 
understands the other's terms. 

I. The Nature and Function of Religion. It is not 
possible here to enter upon a full discussion of the nature 
of Christianity or to attempt to define its sphere. It may 
be said, however, that Christianity does not mean many 
of the things that men have tried to make it mean. It 
is a serious question whether the men who have tried 
to delimit the Christian spirit have not done the very thing 
against which Jesus protested with his life. 

I. It is needless here to give the varied definitions of 
religion that have been framed. In all of these definitions 
there are certain elements in common, and these are the 
essential and constant qualities. Religion, in one aspect at 
least, is the sense of man's relation to the Divine Ruler of 
the world, with the sense of dependence upon, and obliga- 
tion to him. Religion, in another aspect, is the sense of the 
ideal in human life, with an earnest direction of the affec- 
tions and will toward that ideal and the abiding effort to 
realize it in daily life. And thus it is that religion 
comprehends the highest ideals, the deepest emotions, the 
strongest obligations, and the most potent efforts of the 
human heart and will. In fine, it may be said that religion 
is the apprehension of the divine ideal by man, with his 
emotions in presence of this ideal. 



298 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

This is religion in general, but the Christian religion 
means this with one element added, and this is the per- 
sonal element. The religion of Christ is the sense of one's 
relation to the heavenly Father, with the sense of depend- 
ence upon him and the filial desire to do his will. In the 
other aspect it is the apprehension of the ideal of Christ, 
both for man and for society, with a whole-hearted de- 
votion to him and an all-controlling desire to realize his 
ideal in life and in society. 

2. For a second thing, we find that religion ever tends 
to become organic and to express itself in forms and 
institutions of some kind. This is true of all rehgions, 
and it is peculiarly true of the Christian rehgion. Al- 
ways and everywhere the Christian spirit tends to incar- 
nate itself in forms and institutions that express its life 
and become identified with its fortune. And yet it is evi- 
dent that religion is one thing, and the institutions of 
religion are quite another thing. For this reason they 
wholly misunderstand the nature of Christianity who 
would identify it with any of the forms and formulas 
which it has created. It is a serious error to think of 
Christianity as a vague, abstract, indefinite spirit that can 
live in the air and subsist without any form or habitation. 
But it is a no less serious error to limit Christianity to 
certain definite and specific institutions, and to bind 
up its fate and fortune with any of the institutions that 
may bear its name. The ideal is one, but the ideals are 
many. Religion is one, but religions are diverse. 

3. Again, to know the sphere of Christian manifesta- 
tion we must know what is the essential idea of Chris- 
tianity. It has become evident that the idea of the king- 
dom of God is the very center and circumference of the 
Christian system. This idea is woven into the warp and 
woof of the Christian Scriptures. It is the master- 
thought of Jesus' life and teaching. It is the central 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 299 

tn4th of Christianity around which all other truths stand, 
and from which they derive their meaning. This kingdom 
is nothing less than the inner and essential meaning of 
the world. 

The kingdom of God, for the present at least, is an 
ideal hovering high over the actual life of the world. 
But every ideal with vitality seeks embodiment in some 
man or society or institution, and this is peculiarly so^ 
of the ideal of the kingdom. In the lives of men this life 
of the kingdom is seen, and there are men who stand forth 
as living representatives of the kingdom of God. But 
the kingdom is not only a personal ideal, but a social 
ideal as well ; in fact, our whole humanity is designed to be 
the habitation of God through the Spirit (Eph. 2 : 22). 
In what is called the church we have one of the institu- 
tions of the kingdom and one of the agencies for its exten- 
sion in the world. But a natural and inevitable question 
meets us at this point: Is the church the sole institution 
of Christianity? When the Christian spirit has created 
the Christian church, has it fulfilled its whole mission in 
the world ? The very conception of the religion of Christ, 
the very ideal of the kingdom of God, forbids such a 
conclusion. And so we must widen the boundaries of the 
kingdom till they have included all the relations and 
institutions of man's life, the family, and the State, no 
less than the church. The kingdom of God is not an 
institution, and it never can be wholly contained in one. 
Yet it is designed to be the vitalizing, Informing, constitu- 
tive principle of every institution on earth or in heaven. 
In the kingdom of God are found those necessary social, 
architectonic principles which are at once the fundamental 
basis, the regulative ideal, and the constitutive power of 
all human relations, interests, and institutions. The 
church is thus one of the institutions of the kingdom, but 
the church and the kingdom are not by any means iden- 



30O THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

tical and conterminous. The kingdom is the larger 
category and includes not alone the church, but all the 
other institutions and relations of man's life. 

4. This enables us to see the relation of the religion 
of Christ to the life of the State. By the very nature of 
the case the principles of Christ cannot be limited to any 
one sphere of life, but must apply to all life and must 
color all relations. The religion of Christ, which is the 
religion of the kingdom of God, must have to do with 
civic and social affairs no less than with personal and 
ecclesiastical matters. By the nature of the case it must 
create and determine all the institutions of man's being. 
The church is one of the institutions of the Christian 
spirit, an important one indeed ; the one institution that is 
in a way especially charged with the task of propagating 
religion. But this does not mean that the other institu- 
tions of man's life, such as the family and the State, are 
non-religious realms, and that with them religion has con- 
sequently little or nothing to do. The religion of Christ 
is as free as the air and as universal as the sunshine, and 
it can no more be limited to the church than the sunlight 
can be confined in one room, or the air can be claimed 
by one person. By its very nature it is diffusive and uni- 
versal, and is designed to include all life and to determine 
all relations. 

For this reason they who would exclude religion from 
political affairs show an utter misconception of the 
nature of religion and the work of the church. It matters 
not whether this divorce is pronounced in the name of 
religion or of politics, it is wrong in principle and per- 
nicious in results. They who say that the church is the 
one sole institution of religion, and that religion has noth- 
ing to do with social and political affairs, utterly miscon- 
ceive the work of the church and the nature of religion. 
They who say that the State is a non-religious realm, and 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 3OI 

with it Christianity has nothing to do, misunderstand 
the nature of Christianity and the meaning of the State. 
ReHgion is a universal principle and has to do with all 
life. The church is one of the institutions of religion, 
but the State needs religion as much as the church. 

5. The modern argument in favor of the separation of 
Church and State has too often been based on wrong 
premises. For one thing, it has been assumed that the 
Church has to do with sacred things and the State with 
secular interests, and inasmuch as these realms are sepa- 
rate and isolated, Church and State must be separate. 
And so it has come about that life has been parceled out 
between these different institutions and Hfe itself has 
become a dualism. Under the dominion of this false 
conception it has come about that the separation of 
Church and State has meant about the same thing as the 
exclusion of religion from political affairs. Thus, as illus- 
tration, we find a careful writer saying : " It is, in fact, 
quite superfluous to show in this age that from their own 
inherent nature divine and moral sanctions can have no 
application to political matters." Again : " The two do- 
mains of political and divine obligations are thus not only 
exclusive (not necessarily exclusive as relating to par- 
ticular acts, but only as to the character of the sanction 
applied) but, from the individual standpoint, often con- 
tradictory " ( Willoughby, " The Nature of the State," pp. 
52, 53). A more ominous implication, a more unfortunate 
confusion of terms, it is hard to find in any thoughtful 
writer. The writer's meaning, it must be confessed, is not 
quite clear. If he means that the will of God, to the man 
who believes in God, has no application to political mat- 
ters, he is guilty of political atheism. If he means that 
divine sanctions, as men conceive those sanctions, have no 
relation to political matters, he is guilty of hopeless con- 
fusion of thought. The writer cannot mean that the great 



302 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

world of political interests is non-moral and that political 
relations have no moral quality. The writer, we must 
feel, has fallen into the error of so many theorists in 
our time who attempt to make economic and political 
questions matters of pure science without any relation 
to moral content or religious quality. The great sciences 
of man and society, it is needless to say, cannot thus be 
divided off from the great worlds of morality and re- 
ligion. The fact is, ethical principles cannot work in a 
vacuum and the Christian spirit cannot be separated from 
human life. The field of manifestation of both ethics 
and religion is human life and society with all their 
varied interests and relations. The religion that is oc- 
casional is no religion at all. 

The fact is, the faith of the Christian is a principle of 
action, and the religion of Christ is a social gospel. 
Christianity teaches that the whole of life is to be lived 
in all its interests and relations under the direct dominion 
of the Christian ideal; and that the present sphere of 
manifestation of the Christian principle is this present life 
with its families, its churches, and its States. " It is a 
shallow and unworthy view of religion that would so 
etherealize and spiritualize it, as to dissever it from all 
interference with a man's secular trade, his political ac- 
tivities, or his very amusements" (Williams, in " Madi- 
^son Ave. Lectures," p. 439). No error could be more 
■: fatal to true religion than the attempt to make it a private 
•matter, to isolate it from the wider interests of life, to 
consider it as limited wholly to certain so-called sacred and 
religious provinces of life. And, on the other hand, they 
wrong the State and undermine its very foundations 
and destroy the very hope of progress, who would ex- 
clude religion from it, and would build political institu- 
tions upon a purely secular basis. The fact is, they who 
hold this view of things have the whole verdict of history 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 3O3 

and the whole testimony of hfe against them. To rule 
religion out of politics is therefore as impossible as it is 
erroneous; in fact, it dishonors religion by making it 
appear not as the friend, but as the foe of man; and it 
dishonors the State by making it appear as a godless 
realm, with which religion has nothing to do. The fact is, 
as Bascom reminds us, when religion separates its duties 
from those we owe to men, it easily becomes fanciful and 
fanatical, and misses the forces which are promoting 
spiritual progress in the world. But when religion takes 
as its own this very field of the moral relations which 
hold between men — and between men and God — it adds 
the highest incentives to those already present; it has 
before it an urgent and definite work, and the largest in- 
spiration for its accomplishment ( Bascom, '' The Words 
of Christ," pp. 133, 134). 

11. The Ideal of the Christian Religion and of the 
Political State. The writer is not unaware of the charge 
that may be brought against him at this point by some 
who call themselves practical men. When a man begins 
to talk of ideals in political matters, they say, it is time 
for practical people to part company with him and leave 
him to his dreams. At the risk, therefore, of being set 
down as a dreamer, the author yet ventures to consider 
the relation of the ideal of the Christian religion to the 
political State. 

' There is no term that Is more sadly misunderstood than 
this term ideal, or one more generally overworked than 
the term practical. For we soon find that he who talks 
so much of the real and the practical is the true visionary 
and the wholly impractical man. He has seen but a part 
of life, he has no standard of measurement, and does not 
know real values. There are others, calling themselves 
politicians and sometimes statesmen, who affect an in- 
difference to Ideals and dreams on the plea that the things 



304 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

which really concern mankind are tariff schedules and 
civil statutes. Practical men have no time for trifles 
and for trifling ; and statesmen have no strength to spend 
in chasing rainbows. Here, again, it is evident that the 
really practical man is wiser and clearer-visioned than all 
this. The really practical statesman knows his age and his 
people; but he looks out upon the world, and he knows 
both the end to be attained and the road that must be 
traveled; he knows the best policy for to-day because 
he knows the true direction of human progress. The 
ideal is the truly real. The real never finds firm founda- 
tions till it rests upon the ideal. " The only effective 
realists are the idealists." 

I. The first thing that men need is some conception of 
man, some ideal of human society, some sense of direction 
in human progress, some great synthesis that shall give 
life unity and meaning. " That which gives life its key- 
note," says a suggestive writer, " is not what men think 
good, but what they think best. . . Not the criminal code, 
but the counsel of perfection shows us what a nation is 
becoming" (Wedgewood, "The Moral Ideal," p. 373). 
" Virtuous conduct," Socrates used to say, " that is ig- 
norant of its end is purely accidental." To the man with 
no harbor in view one port is as good as another. The 
history of progress will show that mankind has risen in 
the scale of life as it has recognized ideals and has sought 
to follow them. " Take man as you find him," Lilly 
suggests, " in London, in Bagdad, in Pekin, in Ava. Fol- 
low him through his twenty-four hours of work or 
amusement, of eating and sleeping. What is it that makes 
him something more than matter in movement? The 
influence of some great idea, some true thought coming 
to him from Jesus Christ, from Mohammed, from Con- 
fucius, from Gotama, that has mainly formed the spiritual 
atmosphere which he breathes and by which, uncon- 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 305 

sciously, his moral being lives " (Lilly, " Contemporary 
Review," 1885). The fact is, man's conduct is moral and 
rational in so far as it is shot through and through with 
intelligence and purpose. 

" Where there is no vision the people perish." Some 
conception of life men must have if they are to live worthy 
Hves. Some ideal they must cherish if they are to live 
with forethought and hope. Some sense of direction there 
must be if they are to march with vigor and purpose. 
Some great synthesis must obtain if men are to unify their 
efforts and marshal their forces into one army. Reason 
tells man that there must be some meaning to life, some 
ideal for society, some goal for the world, some synthesis 
large enough to comprehend all lower aims and give them 
meaning. And hence it follows that man is but obeying 
the deepest and strongest imperative of his nature when 
he seeks to know this meaning and to discover this ideal, 
to discover this goal and to formulate this synthesis. 
Well then may Frederic Harrison, in a plaintive way, 
expostulate with men because they are not more eager in 
seeking to know the meaning of life and to define the 
ideal of society. " Strange," he says, " that we do not 
all day and night incessantly seek for an answer to this of 
all questions the most vital. Is there anything by which 
our nature can gain its unity? our race acknowledge its 
brotherhood?" ("Nineteenth Century," March, 1881). 
If the religion of Christ can help man at this point, it 
will help him at the point of his deepest need. 

This is not all ; for not only do men need an ideal, but 
they must have a right ideal. If they have false ideals 
they may lose themselves in the wilderness. If they 
have right ideals they will march with confidence and 
will gain the promised land. About the middle of the 
eighteenth century a brilliant Frenchman put forth a 
couple of books, one dealing with education and the 
u 



306 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Other with poHtics. There is much in these books that 
is true, but there is much also that is vicious and mis- 
leading. Yet these books of the speculative Rousseau 
had far-reaching results, and his " Social Contract " was 
probably one of the most potent factors in causing the 
French Revolution. At any rate it is a matter of history, 
as Carlyle reminds us, that the books of this sentimentalist 
were, during the Reign of Terror, bound in the tanned 
skins of French noblemen. 

On the other hand, some nineteen centuries ago, in 
a little out of-the-way Roman province, a young man, 
known as the Carpenter of Nazareth, came forth from his 
shop with a great vision. He gathered around himself a 
few disciples, simple-minded men and peasants most 
of them, and they lived with him long enough to catch 
that vision and to lift their eyes with him toward the far 
horizon. Then, before many months had passed, the 
poor blind world, impatient with this visionary who 
wanted a better world — a kingdom of God on earth he 
called it — conspired against him and crucified him be- 
tvv^een two malefactors. But to-day the ideal of the 
Galilean is leading the upward march of the world, and 
the spirit of his life is the most potent force in our 
civilization. Not the least service of Christianity to the 
world is the high ideal of man which it brings, and the 
true direction of progress which it points out. It is just 
here that religion meets man and proves its worth; just 
here that Christianity proves its claim to be the final 
religion. 

This is so, for the reason that religion represents man's 
highest conception of the world and his loftiest ideal of 
God. " In the truest sense God is the summit of each of 
our consciences taken one by one, and overshadows every 
transient life with an eternal and sacred authority " 
(Martineau, "Study of Religion," Vol. II, p. 49). Re- 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 307 

ligion rests upon this conception of God and his relation 
to man, and every reHgion contains some conception of 
God's being and defines some aspect of his purpose in 
the world. Hence it follows that religion is the highest 
and best conception that man can form of the world and 
its meaning, and contains his largest and most compre- 
hensive ideal for life and for society. And that particular 
form of religion known as Christianity is especially im- 
portant both in its personal and its social aspect, for the 
reason that it is the highest and purest form of religion 
in the world, and contains the highest and purest concep- 
tion of man and society. 

2. In all right political thought there must be some 
metapolitical element. That is, there must be some con- 
ception over and above the present order that shall give 
man a sense of direction and shall furnish a standard 
against which to measure present policies. It will be 
granted that the State exists for the promotion of human 
welfare and good life. But what is human welfare? 
And when can we say that good life is attained? The 
Declaration of Independence affirms that men are en- 
dowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; 
and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness. But why are such things good? The 
utilitarian view of the State affirms that we must seek the 
greatest good of the greatest number. Be It so ; but what 
then is the greatest good ? It is said that those things are 
good for man which tend to promote fulness of life, as 
those things are evil which tend to detract from that ful- 
ness. Be it so; but then we must ask, what is meant by 
this fulness of life? Before we can answer any of these 
questions it is evident that we must have some conception 
of man in his nature and his possibilities. And the same 
questions may be asked with reference to human society 
and to social programmes. What is the true goal of 



308 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

society? What movements may be classed as progress, 
and what must be considered as loss? When human in- 
terests conflict, as they do in every society, which shall 
have the supremacy ? We cannot know whether a certain 
measure makes for the welfare of society till we know 
what man is and have brought all of his interests into con- 
sideration. The fact is, man has interests that can neither 
be measured by the foot rule of expediency, nor fully 
defined in any statistical tables. 

The relation of reHgion to the State is important, 
whatever may be the type of that religion, but it is doubly 
important when that religion is Christianity. For " its 
far-reaching importance lies not so much in its directly 
political assertions, as in that suprapolitical or metapo- 
litical element which it introduced into the world, by 
which we mean that which precedes the political as its 
presupposition, that which lies outside and beyond it 
as its aim and object, and by which the political element 
is to be pervaded as by its soul, its intellectually vivifying 
principle. The metapolitical element consists in the duly 
proportioned view of man, of human nature, and of the 
ultimate object of human Hfe; and the true metapolitic is 
in our opinion that Christian view of the world and of 
life which throws an entirely new light upon the State, by 
placing it in relation with a kingdom which is not of this 
world, and thus forcing it to recognize its own position 
as a mere medium, as destined to subserve this more 
exalted kingdom" (Martensen, "Christian Ethics, 
Social," sec. 45). In the Christian conception of the 
kingdom of God on earth we have a great social ideal 
which includes the lives of men and the societies of earth, 
and in this ideal we see the relation between the progress 
of the State and that great purpose which is being 
worked out in the world. In the last analysis politics is 
faith in action, and progress is applied religion. 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 309 

3. In this true metapolitic we find those great principles 
which shall guide the State in its efforts to promote social 
welfare. The State that is true to itself is seeking to 
promote life and is seeking to create conditions which 
shall make for the development of society. No institu- 
tion, no power on earth so holds in its grasp the weal or 
woe of mankind as the State. The social order, the 
national sentiments, the governmental regulations, the 
social environment influence immeasurably for good or ill 
every soul within their reach. The State is the nursery 
of men, and unless noble men are being produced every 
great end of the State is thwarted. Politics is the science 
of social welfare, and has at heart the achievement of a 
social order in which the person shall be developed and 
the ideals of humanity shall be realized. In the last 
analysis the true wealth of States is to be measured, not 
in terms of material resources, but in the growth of moral 
ideals. And in the last analysis it will appear that all 
material resources, such as wealth, property, and food, 
have value in so far as they minister to the spiritual life 
of man. In themselves these things have no value, but 
for what they will accomplish in man and for society they 
acquire an infinite value. Even economics go out at 
last into theology. There is a gospel ring in the words of 
Ruskin : " The wealth of a man consists in the number of 
things he loves and blesses, and in the number of things 
he is loved and blessed by." The true use of material 
resources is found in their power of ministering to the 
mental and moral and spiritual life of man. In the final 
count government is essentially a moral and spiritual 
process ; and in the ultimate analysis it is directed not 
to material, but to spiritual ends. 

4. Again, in this true Christian metapolitic, we find 
those great principles which shall guide men in the fram- 
ing of laws. We shall assume at this stage of our study 



310 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

that the State has some great end to serve, and that this 
end is the development of man and the promotion of 
human welfare. That the State may fulfil its end, laws 
must be enacted and executed, and in the last analysis 
these laws are but the definition and interpretation of the 
social ideal. What now is the source of authority in the 
State? This question lies at the foundation of all law. 
What is the standard of social right? There must be 
some standard of right, otherwise we are turned adrift 
on the wide sea of moral uncertainty. There must be 
some reason why the members of a State should submit 
to the law that is over them, if they are to be rational 
creatures, and the State is other than an absolute autoc- 
racy. There must be for man some supreme rule of 
right, some supreme standard of conduct, both for men 
and for States. Our preferences are no standard, and our 
interests create no right. No number of personal prefer- 
ences can ever add themselves up into an adequate and 
satisfactory public standard, as no amount of compromise 
and expediency can ever formulate itself into a final and 
authoritative will. There can be nothing in the mass that 
was not in the elements. By no transmutations and ma- 
nipulations of interests and preferences can we bring out 
the product of a human right and a political authority. 
Always and everywhere the men who have opposed 
tyranny have appealed to an authority and standard 
beyond the will of man and higher than his preference. 
If we deny this right of appeal by denying the existence 
of an Appellate Court, we have made way for usurpation 
and tyranny. If we admit this right of appeal, we thereby 
admit that there is a right and will higher than the will of 
one man or of any number of men. Not one man, not 
one million of men can make a right or constitute a final 
authority. The decision and decree of the million, if 
freely expressed and fairly registered, may establish a 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 3II 

strong presumption in favor of right, and may be accepted 
as a working standard of right. And this means that 
there must be something over and above us all which we 
all accept and to which we all may appeal. Thus we are 
driven by the most inexorable logic to declare our 
allegiance to the Christian metapolitic. 

5. Finally, in this Christian conception of the State, we 
find those principles that can adjust the competing inter- 
ests of men and bring them into social peace. The one 
who may endeavor to harmonize these clashing interests 
and decide some of the questions at issue will find himself 
handicapped by the fact that the parties to the con- 
troversy have each a different standard of ethics, and 
neither litigant will recognize the validity of the other's 
code. It is needless to say that these conflicts of men, 
these clashings of interests can never be adjusted by the 
power of one interest to assert itself against all com- 
petitors; neither can they be adjudicated by any patched-up 
truce or temporary compromise. It is evident that we 
never can have social peace till some way can be found of 
harmonizing all of these interests and of giving each its 
due. 

The one need of society is a great central tribunal of 
moral judgment to which all may appeal, and where each 
may receive due consideration. This means that there 
must be some conception of man, some ideal of society, 
some standard of right, some supreme synthesis that 
shall include all lower ideals and be the final authority. 
No one has more clearly stated the difficulties that arise 
because of these conflicting interests than Mazzini, and no 
man has more clearly shown the service which Christi- 
anity can render to society by providing men with this 
human ideal and social synthesis. '* Suppose the interests 
of one individual temporarily opposed to those of an- 
other, how will you reconcile them, except by appealing 



312 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

to something superior to all rights? . . Suppose an indi- 
vidual revolting against the bonds of society; he feels 
himself strong ; his inclinations, his faculties, call him to a 
path other than the common; he has a right to develop 
them, and he wages war against the community. Con- 
sider well what argument can you oppose to him con- 
sistently with the doctrine of rights?" ("Democracy in 
Europe," II). Considerations of utility, he justly shows, 
are not sufficient, for appeals to enlightened self-interest 
only add to the confusion. Repudiating his opinions or 
suppressing them by force is foolish and tyrannical. 
It may be said that each man should desire not 
alone his own well-being, but the well-being of society; 
each man should learn to subordinate his own wishes 
to the rational will of all. " Should ? And why ? Do 
you not see that you are appealing to another principle 
— to a religious principle? Do you not see that you have 
invoked something superior to all the individualities that 
constitute your society; something superior to all laws 
that you can promulgate in the name of utility? " (ibid.). 
The one principle which is superior to all other principles 
is the religious principle. Thus " to attain our object 
we must go back to principles ; must reattach the nations 
which now go about groping their way in empty space 
to the laws of progress ; to humanity ; to God." And this 
is the very thing that Christianity aims to do ; this is the 
very service that it renders society. In a word, it pro- 
vides us with an ideal and synthesis large and compre- 
hensive enough to include all the lesser ideals and 
interests of man; it contains those great principles of 
social right and justice which can harmonize the conflict- 
ing interests of society and can adjust the relations of the 
one and the many. 

III. Religion and the Social Forces. It is evident that 
some power or influence is needed which shall unite men 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 3I3 

in social fellowship, which shall induce them to take 
thought for the common life and to subordinate their 
preferences to the common welfare. In view of the large 
place that the average man is called to occupy in the demo- 
cratic State, it is evident that the need of this power 
and influence is greatly accentuated. Democracy, we have 
agreed, is the confession of human brotherhood; it is the 
recognition of common aims and the confession of mutual 
obligations; and democracy is hence simply impossible 
without faith and fraternity and self-sacrifice. 

I. Various attempts have been made to define and 
classify these social forces and influences. A brief con- 
sideration of the difference between the social machinery 
involved and the social forces operative through that 
machinery may enable us to appreciate the problem be- 
fore us. 

In all times men have placed great reliance upon such 
purely external and material means as the sword and 
the machinery of government. This study is concerned 
with the State in its relation to man's life and to 
social progress. To set a low estimate upon government 
— the organized agency of the State — is to deny our very 
thesis and convict ourselves of solemn trifling. The State, 
we believe, is one of the most important agencies of 
man's life, and has a most marked influence upon social 
welfare. It is the only institution that represents the 
whole people, and is the only agency through which they 
can co-operate in their search after progress. But we need 
to keep in mind a distinction which is vital, a distinction 
which, if heeded now, will save us from much confusion 
in the end. The State is the people organized in a political 
capacity in behalf of the common good ; and this means 
the co-operation of all in behalf of the common welfare. 
The government is the machinery of the State; and 
government is thus a means and not a source of power. 



314 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Government, as such, is wholly ineffective and impotent; 
it invents nothing, and never has invented anything; Hke 
all other machinery, it produces results that bear a direct 
relation to the power communicated. Organization is 
necessary that the best results may be achieved, and the 
machinery of the State is of untold value. But the real 
function of government is transmissive, and not origi- 
native. When used as a transmitter and distributor of 
power, it is capable of immeasurable results. The ma- 
chinery of government of itself and by itself is weak and 
impotent, and its real power depends upon those social 
forces which use it as an agency and work through it as 
a means. The real forces of society we see lie behind the 
machinery of government and work through it. 

Efforts have been made to analyze and define the nature 
of these forces that operate in society and work through 
the State. What are the motives that determine men's 
conduct? What are the forces that mold society? It 
has been assumed that knowledge of the right, intellectual 
ideas, enlightened self-interest, the greatest good of ^ the 
greatest number, are the great desiderata; and given 
these, all other things will follow. The best sociological 
thought is thrown fairly against these assumptions. In 
his '' Psychic Factors of Civilization," Professor Ward has 
shown that the intellect is not a social force at all, but 
simply a directing agency, and that the real forces are 
psychic, being such things as desires and emotions of 
various kinds and degrees ("Psychic Factors," pp. 222, 
55). With these conclusions agree such investigators as 
Professor Ross, who declares that sociology is chiefly 
a psychical science. "Its causes are to be sought in 
mental processes, its forces are psychic forces, and no 
non-psychic factors should be recognized until it is shown 
just how they are able to affect motive and choice" 
("Foundations of Sociology," p. 161); and Professor 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 315 

Small, who says that "the sociologists have done their 
part to show that the most significant factors of life are 
the work of mind, and not the grinding of machinery." 
" At the same time we must protest against the tendency 
to accept interpretations in terms of mental action, which 
is merely a process analogous with a mechanical process. 
The real explanation must be found in the spiritual initi- 
ative, which is superior to mechanical causation " 
(" Gen. Sociology," p. 639). 

In like manner all attempts to find the moving 
forces of society in such considerations as self-interest and 
utility signally fail at the crucial point. We may grant 
that man is a being susceptible to pleasure and pain; 
we may admit that a constant effort on his part is to seek 
the one and to avoid the other ; we may say that true wis- 
dom is shown in the pursuit of useful and pleasurable 
things both for self and for others, and we may also 
affirm that nothing is really good for society that is bad 
for the individual. But when we watch the principle of 
utility as a power of social action we find that it fatally 
breaks down and refuses to work. As Mazzini has said in 
such eloquent words, " there are no arguments that can 
convince a man that his utility consists in sacrificing a part 
of his enjoyments for the common enjoyment. In the name 
of utility who will say to a people, * In the name of thy 
own advantage, sacrifice thyself ! In the name of thy 
well-being, die! ' " (" Democracy in Europe," III). There 
was at the bottom of the cup of hemlock which Socrates 
drank, something more than a calculation of pleasure or 
disappointed expectation. 

We speak sometimes of the power of ideas, and place 
great reliance upon their dissemination among the people. 
There is a grave danger here, and error at this point leads 
to bitter disappointment in the end. Professor Ward has 
shown with keen insight that ideas alone are not suffi- 



3l6 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

cient, and that the soul is the great transforming agent, 
the power behind the throne of reason in the evolution of 
man (" Psychic Factors," p. 49). Long ago other teachers 
recognized this ; thus Confucius writes : " I have made 
vain efforts to put men who wish to walk in it, on the 
way to wisdom; not succeeding, I have no recourse but 
tears." And Marcus Aurelius cries, " Protest till you 
burst, men will go on all the same." Right ideas, cor- 
rect principles are important, yea, they are necessary, 
but when standing alone they are wholly impotent and 
ineffective. But let them be filled with conviction and 
emotion, let them be thrilling and throbbing with moral 
and spiritual fervor, and they are the mightiest forces 
beneath the sun and become the potency of world-wide 
results. 

The more closely we study the facts of life, and the 
less we are misled by symbols, the more clearly do we 
see that the real forces that move men and operate in 
society are psychic and spiritual forces. Man, in the last 
analysis, is a psychic and spiritual being, and not a me- 
chanical and physical being. External pressure and ma- 
terial conditions may have much to do with his life, but 
they influence him just so far as they affect his thought 
and persuade his will. The ideas of others, the com- 
mands of his masters, may have much to do with the 
color of his thought and the bent of his life, but in and 
of themselves they have no power over him. The com- 
mon assumption that there are some mystic and objective 
powers in the world that in some strange and occult way 
exert a kind of external and irresistible pressure upon 
men, controlling their wills and shaping their lives with- 
out their knowledge or consent, is one that cannot stand 
for a moment in the light of modern psychology. The 
fact is, the real powers that work in man and in society, 
the powers that are potent and effective, are not abstract 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 317 

and objective powers, but psychic and spiritual. They 
are such powers as work in men and through men; that 
is, such powers as can inform the mind and quicken the 
conscience, that can enchain the affections and arouse the 
will ; they are such forces as reside in the brave heart, the 
steady purpose, and the unflinching hand ; in a word, they 
are psychic, moral, spiritual, religious forces. In the last 
analysis it thus appears that the real powers of life 
and society are those very powers that find their highest 
and fullest expression in what we call religion. 

2. The moment we consider the essential nature of 
religion, that moment we see its great potency as a 
social force. By religion, as we have seen, we mean the 
sense of man's relation to the invisible and divine Ruler 
of the world. Religion may or may not be concerned 
primarily with the belief in another life ; thus we find that 
the religion of the ancient Hebrews was almost wholly 
destitute of this belief; at least it was not by any means 
a primary and commanding feature of their religion. 
But religion always rests upon a belief in God, and is 
inspired with a sense of obligation to do his will; and 
religion always represents man's highest conception of the 
world and his highest conviction of duty. In the purest 
form of religion, as we believe — that represented by the 
religion of Jesus of Nazareth — the central place is given 
to the great conception of God as Father and man as child. 
And implied and involved in it all, woven into the very 
warp and woof of the Christian system, we find the con- 
ception of a divine society on earth, fashioned according 
to the will of God and filled with the spirit of Christ. In 
its essence, as Fairbairn shows, it is a mighty plan, 
splendid in its efficiency for the construction from the base 
upward, of a humanity or a society, that shall in all its 
parts, through all its members, and in all their relations, 
express and articulate the righteous will of God (Fair- 



3l8 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

bairn, " Religion in His. and Mod. Life," p. 141). Thus 
the various Hnes of investigation converge at the one 
point, and we see that religion is the most potent force 
that can work in man and in society. The forces that 
are needed in society are psychic and spiritual forces, and 
in religion we find the very forces that are required to 
make men social beings and to inspire them to labor for 
the common welfare. 

3. The study of history shows that religion is the chief 
factor in human life and social progress. In saying this 
we are not blind to the evils and miseries that have been 
caused by religion, nor do we forget that it has been one 
of the chief instruments in man's oppression and en- 
slavement. We do not refuse to read those pages which 
tell how religion has been used to suppress men's aspi- 
rations and to make them satisfied with their masters. 
We do not forget either how religion has been associated 
with the most gross and cruel superstitions, and has filled 
the mind of man with named and nameless terrors. The 
fact is, there are no wrongs and cruelties that cannot 
be traced back either directly or indirectly to religion. 

But this story of the perversion of religion, black as 
that story is, bears testimony to the potency of religion 
in the life of man. The perversion of the greatest good 
is the worst evil, and the very abuses of religion testify 
to its immeasurable potency. In the highest form of 
religion, that represented by Christianity, we find few of 
these negative and objectionable features, while it is 
filled with those that are positive and inspiring. Of 
course, the social and political value of any religion will 
depend in the last analysis upon the character of the 
religion itself. In this respect Christianity has an im- 
measurable advantage over all the other religions of the 
world, for the reason that it is unique in several aspects. 
For one thing, it gives us the highest and worthiest con- 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 3I9 

ception of man; for " There is no religion which regards 
with such respect the individuahty of man, and seeks so 
sympathetically to guide, foster, and develop it, and 
eventually assigns to it a destiny so glorious" (Dennis, 
" Christian Missions and Social Progress," Vol. I, p. 
419). Not only so, but Christianity gives in the clearest 
and most positive terms the conception of human brother- 
hood. Beneath the shadow of the name of Father there 
is no place for caste and class, with all the pernicious and 
divisive influences that flow from these things. In addi- 
tion to all this, it embodies the highest and purest con- 
ceptions of human life and duty, and sets before men 
great ethical principles which are both essentially rational 
and sufficiently authoritative. And as the consummation 
and culmination of all, it is a fountain of great and 
conquering motives, a reservoir of fertilizing and fructi- 
fying streams of impulse and aspiration. It is the foun- 
tain of those impulses and imperatives which lead men to 
unselfish service and to social self-sacrifice, and in this 
respect it is worthy of all honor. 

An appeal to history, with reference to the influence 
of religion, will yield some suggestive results. Among 
all the great nations of the past the religious factor is 
the most prominent in the people's life. That of the 
peoples of old, Greece, Rome, Egypt, Israel, cannot be 
understood either in its beginnings or in its development 
with religion ignored. Look where you will in the wide 
field of history, says Prof. J. R. Seeley, you find religion, 
whenever it works freely and mightily, either giving birth 
to and sustaining States, or else raising them up to a 
second life after their destruction. It is not too much to 
say that it has been the chief State-builder, and national 
character is the result of its influences ("Natural Re- 
ligion," pp. 188-201). 

4. This is not all. Society at bottom rests upon self- 



320 THE CHRISTL\N STATE 

sacrifice, and the degree of self-sacrifice is the degree of 
social stability. Progress in the last analysis is self- 
sacrifice, and the degree of self-sacrifice is the degree of 
progress. That society may endure and progress it is 
necessary that men begin to subordinate self to the 
common interest, and to learn to take thought for the 
common good. It is evident that the principles of self- 
interest cannot help men here and can never move them 
to this needful sacrifice. This is becoming very plain, and 
is the ruling note of many modern volumes. Thus Benja- 
min Kidd, in his " Social Evolution," a book of clear 
insight in spite of its gross misreading of the basis of 
religion, shows very conclusively that there is no power 
in the mere conflict of interests to yield the product of 
social progress. It is in religion alone that we can find 
any clear warrant for social progress, as it is in religion 
alone that we find the dominating motives to social 
service. Society is founded upon friendliness and co- 
operation and self-sacrifice, and when these are lost 
society is at an end. 

The other forces named may have some influence upon 
social life, but at best they are weak and uncertain when 
compared with this supreme and masterful force. It is 
in religion alone that we can find those motives and in- 
centives which can lift men out of themselves and can 
transform them into self-respecting and self-sacrificing 
members of society. Considerations of utility and en- 
lightened self-interest may have some influence upon 
men, but they cannot furnish those inspirations that re- 
new men and makes States. Mere knowledge does not 
convert the will from bad to good. Lombroso, in his 
" L'Uomo DeUnquente," testifies that the number of male- 
factors is greatest, relatively, in the liberal professions 
(Lilly, "First Principles," p. 297). Considerations of 
self-interest cannot lift men out of themselves and con- 



THE STATE AXD ITS RELIGION 32 1 

Strain them to spend and be spent for the common good. 
Society will perish when friendliness and love and self- 
sacrifice, the very elements of religion, die out of human 
associations. 

5. And for another thing this religious spirit will 
create and guide the social conscience of the people, and 
will rouse them to strive for social and moral improve- 
ment. From the beginning religion has been present, 
and as the centuries have gone it has produced ever new 
forms of social life. The religion of Christ has been at 
work during the Christian era, and it has caused many 
significant changes. It has given men a new ideal of life, 
the highest and noblest ; it has taken form in the Christian 
church, an achievement of no small meaning, and it has 
created a conscience that has moved men to take thought 
for others and to bear their brothers' burdens. It has 
given birth to many missionary and philanthropic enter- 
prises, and has quickened men to proclaim good news to 
all. It has brought man to social and political self- 
consciousness, and has created in him a sense of hu- 
manity. That there may be progress, men must realize 
the evils that exist, and must be moved to unite their 
forces against these evils. " The history of mankind is 
the growth of one new conscience after another " ( Henry 
D. Lloyd, " Man the Social Creator," p. 208). 

There is nothing like Christianity to make* and arouse 
conscience, to disclose and unmask evil, to challenge the 
accepted custom, and to brand with scorn habitual wrongs. 
It is a kind of index finger which, in all human history, has 
pointed the way toward a better and more perfect social 
order. It brings men under the sway of the loftiest incen- 
tives, and it places them under the influence of great con- 
victions. The Christian spirit has not wrought in vain 
during the centuries past. One evil after another has 
been seen and felt, and men have taken up arms against 
v 



322 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

it. Now it has convicted men of the sin of infanticide 
and laws have been framed against it; now it has given 
testimony against gladiatorial shows, and in time edicts 
have forbidden these; now it has made men see the evil 
of slavery, and the old evil has disappeared. Now it has 
felt the iniquity of war, and nations have begun to take 
thought for the things of peace. One new blush after 
another has come to the cheeks of mankind, and they 
have begun to feel a sense of shame in presence of some 
abuse. The new conviction has found expression in new 
laws, and these have conserved the gains that have been 

made. 

All this enables us to appraise at something near its 
true value that form of religion which we have agreed to 
call Christian. For one thing, it gives us a conception of 
God the highest and the purest that man has ever known ; 
it gives us the conception of God who, in his very 
essence, is righteousness and love, a God who is at once 
Father and King. It gives us also a conception of God's 
purpose in the world that is the most splendid that has 
ever enriched human thought ; it gives us the conception 
of a kingdom of God on earth, a pure, righteous, and lov- 
ing society of intelligent and moral beings, a conception 
that is at once a great constitutive idea and architectonic 
principle of human society. It gives a conception 
of man that is at once the noblest and richest the 
world has ever known ; it shows us that man is made to 
be the child of God, and hence his life has an infinite 
meaning and value ; and it gives us the conception of hu- 
manity as a family of brothers in which each man is 
entitled to all respect, and is worthy of all honor. Thus 
in the religion of Christ we have everything that the State 
can need, both to ensure its perpetuity and to promote its 
progress. We have in it the supreme ideal which shines 
before men to lure them upward and onward. We have 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 323 

the spirit which is to determine the Hves and activities of 
men. We have the gospel message that Hfe is a service 
and each man is to find his own Hfe as he loses it in the 
life of all. And we have a uniting and unifying spirit 
that draws men together and constrains them to live as 
brothers in a family. 

All this brings us face to face with the special need of 
religion in a democratic State. For one thing, democracy 
is, as we have seen, a confession of brotherhood in social 
and political relations. But human brotherhood has no 
meaning or vitality apart from the common divine 
Fatherhood. It is in the Christian truth of the Father- 
hood of God that we find at once the source and the 
warrant of the democratic assumption of the brotherhood 
of man. Suppose that men should lose out of their lives 
the belief in this divine Fatherhood; suppose that in the 
lapse of time this great truth should dissolve into thin 
air? In that case the belief in human brotherhood will die 
out of men's hearts and will lose all power in society; 
the old terms may still be used, but they will be utterly 
impotent for the reason that they are wholly empty. 
With the passing of the conviction of human brotherhood 
based upon divine Fatherhood, the great truths that are 
at once the constitutive basis and the inspiring motive 
of democracy will also pass away. With the passing of 
the conception of fraternity, liberty has no vitality and 
equality has no basis, and this means the passing away of 
democracy itself. The Christian spirit has created modern 
democracy, and modern democracy will run its course 
and end in dismal night when the Christian spirit no 
longer animates and inspires it. 

And for another thing, all this enables us to see the 
relation of religion to the progress of the democratic 
State. In every form of the State a certain amount of 
friendliness and co-operation, justice and self-sacrifice — 



324 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

the inner principles of religion — are necessary in order 
that men may live together and may labor for the com- 
mon good; but in a democratic State these factors are 
simply indispensable. For democracy is a confession of 
mutual aims and obligations, with a conscious and vol- 
untary co-operation in behalf of the common welfare. 
The great difference between the democratic State and 
all other forms is not in the amount of social subordi- 
nation and self-sacrifice, for a democracy may impose 
more limitations upon men than a monarchy. In every 
form of the State men must submit to laws and must make 
sacrifices for the sake of the common Hfe. But in a 
monarchy the laws are imposed upon men from without, 
and the sacrifices made are more or less compulsory. In 
a democracy, however, this social service and self-sacri- 
fice are almost wholly voluntary and conscious on the 
part of all. There is no force or factor that has one-half 
the social efficiency of religion, and there is no factor 
or force that can take its place. Appeals to self-interest 
are well enough in their way; compromise may adjust 
many difficulties for the time, and compulsion may even 
preserve a certain semblance of peace ; but the highest and 
broadest interests of society can never be promoted with- 
out a large amount of mutual aid, social co-operation, and 
self-sacrifice. It is just here that we discover the real 
relation of the Christian religion to the democratic State. 
For Christianity in its inner essence and fundamental 
principles is a religion of brotherhood and equality, of 
love and self-sacrifice; the law of Christ is the law of 
brotherly kindness and social helpfulness, of fair dealing 
and friendliness ; in a word, in its very essence and quality 
it is a love of righteousness and a struggle for the life 
of others. In a democracy the people rule; but unless 
God lives in the people and rules through them, the 
State will crumble into dust and chaos will come again. 



THE STATE AND ITS RELIGION 325 

No one has seen all this more clearly than James 
Bryce, in his great study of '' The American Common- 
wealth." In democratic America the whole system of 
government seems to rest, not on armed force, but on 
the will of the numerical majority. " So, sometimes, 
standing in the midst of a great American city, and 
watching the throngs of eager figures streaming hither 
and thither, marking the sharp contrasts of poverty and 
wealth, an increasing mass of wretchedness and an in- 
creasing display of luxury, . . one is startled by the 
thought of what might befall this huge, yet delicate 
fabric of laws and commerce and social institutions were 
the foundations it has rested on to crumble away. Sup- 
pose all these men ceased to believe that there was any 
power above them, any future before them, anything in 
heaven or earth but what their senses told them of; 
suppose that their consciousness of individual force and 
responsibility, already dwarfed by the overwhelming 
power of the multitude, and the fatalistic submission it 
engenders, were further weakened by the feeling that 
their swiftly fleeting life was rounded by a perpetual 
sleep? 

Soles occidere et re dire possimt 
Nobis, quum semel occidit hrevis lux 
Nox est perpetua una dormienda. 

" Would the moral code stand unshaken, and with it 
the reverence for law, the sense of duty toward the com- 
munity, and even toward the generations yet to come? 
Would men say ' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
die?' . . History, if she cannot give a complete answer 
to this question, tells us that hitherto civilized society 
has rested on religion, and that a free government has 
prospered best among religious peoples" ("The Ameri- 
can Commonwealth," Vol. II, pp. 582, 583). 



f^ 



326 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

I, In the last analysis the State is the organized faith of a 

f' people, and where there is no faith — faith in God and 

|; faith in man — society is impossible, and the State crumbles 

into dust. And in the last analysis the real faith of a 

people finds expression in their politics, and thus the 

political life of a people is the final revelation of their 

religion, and their religion is the chief factor in their 

political programme. The religion of a people expresses 

that which they regard as the best and truest, and the 

I State is the sphere in which the religion of a people finds 

I its full and final expression. The real religion of a people 

I shows itself in their politics more faithfully than in their 

theologies, and their politics is the best illustration of 

the inner quality of their religion. 

In fine, as the conclusion of this study, we find that 
religion is the most potent and pervasive power in human 
life and human society. We find that the forces which 
generate and sustain States are not material but spiritual. 
We find that the great standards against which all the 
laws and actions of men are measured are not physical 
but spiritual. And we find likewise that the goal toward 
which the State is moving and the great end which it sub- 
serves in the economy of life, is not temporal but spiritual. 
In a word, the State is the social sphere of religion, and 
religion is the real life of the State. " If you go through 
the world you may find cities without walls, without let- 
ters, without rulers, without houses, without money, 
without theaters and games : but there was never yet seen, 
nor shall be seen by man, a single city without temples 
and gods, or without oaths, prophecies, and sacrifices . . . ; 
nay, I am of opinion that a city might be sooner built 
without any ground beneath it than a commonwealth 
could be constituted altogether destitute of belief in the 
gods; or being constituted, could be preserved" (Plu- 
tarch, "Against Colotes," C. XXXI). 



XIII 

THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 

IN the generations past men have faced great problems 
and have made great sacrifices. They have done this 
that their children might have an inheritance glorious 
and unencumbered. During the progress of the centuries 
one problem after another has arisen and has been met; 
and men believed that with the fulfilment of this task 
the way for humanity's march might be smoothed. 
Abolish autocracy, they have said, and let government 
rest upon the consent of the governed, and the golden 
age will dawn. Make an end of slavery and humanity 
can breathe more freely. Break the unholy alliance be- 
tween Church and State and both will speed toward their 
goal with new hope. Give every person, whether male or 
female, an equal vote, and the new time will be at our 
very doors. One by one these demands have been met, 
here or there, but somehow the people are not content. 
In fact, it is with the modern State as with the desert- 
wandering Israelites; to them the promised land meant 
the fruition of all their hopes and the solution of all 
their problems. But no sooner were they settled in the 
new land than a whole troop of new problems arose, and 
life became as strenuous as before. 

In all ages and conditions the problem of the State's 
existence is an insistent one, and every State has fallen far 
enough below its ideal. In all times, and under the best 
leadership, it has had a hard struggle to maintain itself 
and perform the minimum of its functions. But in 
modern times, the State, in these Western lands at least, 

327 



328 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

is becoming democratic, and the sovereignty of the people 
has been formally declared. Now, one need not make any 
extended investigations to discover that the rank and file 
of the people do not possess the high qualifications that 
are required of such sovereign citizens. In fact, one 
finds that the affairs of State are falling into hands that 
are poorly prepared to meet the difficulties and to bear 
the burdens. 

Then another factor enters the field to complicate the 
whole problem, viz., the presence of Christianity. For 
nineteen centuries it has wrought among men, but it is 
only in recent times that its political bearings have been 
fully seen and its social ideal plainly recognized. In these 
democratic Western lands the affairs of State are more 
and more falling into the hands of men who have the 
Christian aim and motive. Now, since the Christian ideal 
is absolute in its requirements, and the Christian law is 
universal in its sweep, it follows that Christian citizenship 
is confronted with the task of creating a truly Christian 
civilization. Thus, to the minimum aims and functions 
of the State are now added the maximum aims and 
functions of the Christian democracy. They who suppose 
that the mere fact of democracy is sufficient to solve all 
problems are blind leaders of the blind. The truth is, the 
fact of democracy in itself says little about the real life 
of the people, and does not demonstrate their fitness for 
self-government. They who imagine that the mere pres- 
ence of Christian men in a State will bring in the mil- 
lennium are no less blind leaders of the blind. The truth 
is, the mere making of good individuals has meant very 
little in the life of the State; for not until religion be- 
comes socialized does it become fully potent. 

This means that there are certain problems that are 
common to all States, simply as States, without regard 
to their form of government. There are others that in a 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 329 

way are characteristic of the democratic State, and the 
more pure the democracy the more numerous these prob- 
lems are. Moreover, there are problems that, in a sense, 
belong only to the State that is approximately Christian. 
The special difficulties themselves may be old, but they 
are not felt as problems till the State possesses a certain 
Christian self-consciousness. The State that is democratic 
must face all the problems of every State, and many more 
besides, only with this difference : where in other forms of 
the State the solution is more or less optional, in a democ- 
racy their solution is imperative ; for the very life of the 
State is at stake. We may carry this one step farther and 
may apply it to the Christian State, which is called to 
solve all the problems of every other form, with the 
added problems that grow out of the Christian conception 
of man; and whereas their solution is vital in all other 
types of States, their solution is here imperative for the 
reason that the whole legitimacy and power of Chris- 
tianity are at stake in their solution. Something will be 
gained if we can secure a clear vision of the problems 
before us and can learn how vital they are to the life of 
the State. ' — ■ 

I. The Problem of Public Service. The fundamental 
fact in a democratic State is the participation of the 
people in the affairs of government. The time will never 
come when men can go away and leave their government 
to take care of itself. Governments always and every- 
where, De Tocqueville reminds us, will be as rascally as 
people permit them to be : and this is especially true in a 
democracy. It is hence almost needless to say that the 
successful working of a democratic government depends 
upon the direct participation and active interest of the 
people in its affairs. Without this direct participation of 
the people in government there can be no democracy. 
Without this intelligent, courageous, and unselfish devo- 




330 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

tion to the public good, there can be no successful democ- 
racy. Just here we come face to face with one of the 
most serious problems of the modern State. For alas ! the 
^ people are not all intelligent in civic matters; they are 

not all courageous ; and too few are willing to make any 
■^''-"-^oSacrifices for the public good. 

In the chapter on '' The Dangers of Democracy," we 
have considered some of the difficulties that beset the 
democratic State; and the dangers we there considered 
define some of the problems that are most insistent and 
troublesome. We may simply refer to what was there 
said and pass on to notice some other elements entering 
into the problem. For one thing, the democratic idea 
implies and demands an independent and courageous 
spirit in the rank and file of the citizens. It means the 
independence to think for one's self and the courage to 
put one's convictions into effect. Now, the simple fact is, 
there is a large number of people in every community who 
refuse themselves the sacrament of thought and are con- 
tent to allow some one else to think for them. Popular 
government proceeds on the theory that the people are 
sovereign, and that each sovereign will respect his man- 
hood ; that is, that he will form his own conclusions with 
respect to men and measures, and will have sufficient 
independence and initiative to make his judgments 
effective. 

Then, in the modern democratic State, we find the 
party system in full operation, and as the success of the 
party depends upon the suppression of dissent, independ- 
ence, and courage are studiously discouraged. Regularity 
— the willingness to abide by the party platform — is 
lauded, while irregularity — the refusal to stand by the 
party principles — is denounced. It must be admitted that 
in the average community it costs something for the 
average citizen to do his own thinking and to follow his 



/ \ 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 33 1 

own convictions. In fact, it means petty persecution that 
is not less trying because it is so insidious. " The re- 
pubHc will perish," Lowell used to say, " when men cease 
to protest." But many things combine and conspire to 
make such protest difficult and dangerous in the modern 
State. 

In the more advanced modern States the number of ^i 

scholarly and educated men is rapidly increasing. It 
must be admitted, however, that this very culture of the 
few in a way unfits them for the rough and tumble work 
of practical citizenship. Their culture has so separated 
them from their fellows that they live in a world apart. 
The moment one of these men takes an interest in public 
affairs and speaks his protest, he is likely to be sneered 
at by the politicians and suspected by the people. Thus 
it comes about that only men of marked ability and strong 
individuality have the courage to do their own political 
thinking and to put their own conclusions into action ^ 

("The Real Problems of Democracy," by E. L. Godkin, 
" Atlantic Monthly," July, 1896). 

Further, democracy implies and demands a spirit of 
self-sacrifice in the rank and file of the people. It means 
the willingness to serve the common good and to bear the 
burden and heat of the State's struggle for life and 
progress. One need not spend much time in trying to 
show that not all men who are members of the democratic 
State have this spirit of self-sacrifice and social service. 
It is not my purpose to apportion blame for this condition 
of things, and it is possible that the blame must be gen- 
erally distributed. It is possible that many of the ex- 
ponents of democracy are to blame in part, at least, for 
this condition, for too long they have thrown great em- 
phasis upon the doctrine of rights and have charged the 
people to consider their own interests. And it is probable 
that the church is somewhat to blame in that it has not 



332 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

explained the universality of the Christian law and has 
not inspired men to make sacrifice for the common wel- 
fare. At any rate, be the causes what they may, the fact 
remains that the number of men in the State who take 
large views of pubHc questions, who look not every one 
upon his own things but every one also upon the things 
of others, who are wiUing to subordinate self-interest 
to the common welfare, and to endure hardship without 
hope of gain or honor is, unfortunately, not large. 

This lack of the altruistic spirit is seen, on the one side, 
in the tendency to construe all public questions in terms 
of personal advantage. This is not all, but too many 
show a disposition to use the machinery of government 
for their own interests, with little or no regard to the com- 
mon welfare. Mayor Jones, of Toledo, stated one day 
that he had been trying to find out the life principle of a 
number of so-called successful men. One man, when 
asked what was his principle in life, said with some 
emphasis : " My principle in life ? Well, I do not care 
what happens to any man in the world so long as it does 
not happen to me." Too many are like the New York 
business man who, when importuned to lend his aid and in- 
fluence in behalf of a necessary but unpopular reform, said 
with some impatience : " This is all very well, but I do not 
see how it concerns me." It has come to this, that men do 
not expect altruistic service, and when they find a man 
who is showing unusual interest in public matters, they 
at once suspect him of ulterior motives. Many men are 
concerned with the question of making a living and get- 
ting rich, and they are quite ready to turn over to the 
politicians the selection of proper candidates for public 
office and the settlement of questions of public moment. 
Such men, it may be said, are among the most discourag- 
ing and dangerous men in the land; they are the very 
people who are jeopardizing free institutions and are 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 333 

casting popular government under a cloud. Society is 
possible only where there are many altruistic and self- 
sacrificing people who look not alone on their own things, 
but also on the things of others. Social progress is pos- 
sible only where there are many people who are willing 
to subordinate self-interest and to live for the common 
Hfe. 

Finally, democracy demands from every citizen un- 
ceasing vigilance and a public spirit. How to secure* 
these is one of the primary problems that confront the 
modern State. In the republic of Athens no important 
law could be passed unless six thousand votes in its favor 
were deposited in the urns. To secure an audience of 
necessary size, servants of the State were sent throug-h 
the market-place with a rope chalked red ; and whosoever 
received from that a stain on his toga was fined as an 
enemy of the State. Charles Sumner often affirmed that 
the citizen who neglects his political duties is a public 
enemy. A law of Pythagoras pronounced every man 
" infamous who, in questions of public moment, did not 
take sides" (Cook, "On Conscience," p. 255). To go 
into politics to serve selfish ends may be culpable, but it 
is still more culpable to stay out of politics for selfish 
reasons. The modern State must create such a public 
sentiment that every self-respecting man will be ashamed 
to shirk his public duties. No one can be a good man and 
a bad citizen. Does a man possess culture, and wealth, 
and the Christian spirit ? Then there is every reason why 
he should take an active interest in public affairs, why he 
should accept the leadership of the social faith. Democ- 
racy does not mean equality in ability, and it does not 
mean the absence of all leadership. The fact is, leader- 
ship is more necessary in a democracy than in autocracy, 
but it is a leadership of a different kind. In a democracy 
it must be a leadership of intelligence and character, and 



334 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

it must find its warrant in the confidence of the people. 
How to secure this pubHc service from quahfied men is 
one of the most abiding and difficult problems of the 
democratic State. In a way it lies at the basis of all other 
problems, and in a real sense its solution means the solu- 
tion of the other problems of society. Some, indeed, be- 
cause of this lack of public spirit in the rank and file of 
the people take a gloomy view of the democratic experi- 
ment. 

II. The Problem of Political Corruption. It does not 
lie within the scope of our purpose to institute any com- 
parison between the past and the present condition of the 
world. It does not change the problem before us to say 
that there was more political corruption and fraud in 
other lands and generations than is found to-day in 
democratic lands. And it does not demonstrate the suc- 
cess of the democratic experiment to prove that in a 
democracy men are more honest than in an autocracy. 
Such comparisons are wide of the mark for these reasons : 
democracy itself is a comparatively recent thing, and 
hence such a moral comparison is out of the question; 
and the amount of corruption and fraud that may little 
affect the stability of government in autocracy may 
undermine the very fotmdations of a democracy. And 
yet the long study of history will show that the great 
monarchies of the past came to their downfall because of 
the corruption and injustice that prevailed. 

Not only so, but in all the democratic experiments of 
the past corruption and injustice have been the chief 
causes of death. In brief, the history of every democratic 
experiment in the past can be told in a few words : First, 
poverty and struggle, with honesty and justice; then 
success and progress, with growing pride and increasing 
wealth; then luxury and corruption, with suspicion and 
division ending in dissolution and desolation. There is 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 335 

one lesson that comes to us from every nation of the 
past, that the principles of honesty and fair deahng and 
justice are principles of unity, peace, and strength, while 
the vices of chicane, and corruption, and oppression, are 
the vices that spell suspicion, conflict, and ruin. 

One form of corruption to be mentioned is what is 
known as vote-buying. Careful investigations have been 
made in various States concerning the extent of this 
evil, and the figures are not reassuring. In some com- 
munities the proportion of venal voters is placed as 
high as twenty-five per cent.; and this means that by 
the use of money men are able to turn elections pretty 
much as they please. It is certain that the men who gain 
office by such means are not careful to use that office for 
the public good alone ; in fact, men are willing to make 
such expenditures of money because they hope to recoup 
themselves in some way. The use of money in elections 
is a matter of public shame and open scandal. Some of 
the highest offices in the United States are believed to 
have been secured by the use of money. The fact is, 
many have come to look upon membership in the United \y^ 
States Senate as the purchase of millionaires or the 
reward of politicians. 

Then, in many of the cities and States of America, 
popular government is under a cloud because of the 
^notorious frauds that are perpetrated. Special privileges 
^and franchises are a marketable asset, and hence many 
men are anxious to obtain them. Not only so, but the 
corporations holding these privileges do not always find 
it convenient and profitable to observe the laws and ordi- 
nances ; and hence they are interested in securing the elec- 
tion of manageable men and keeping government as 
inefficient as possible. In all the cities and States where 
corruption reigns it is usually found that the head and 
front of the ofifending are the great corporations which 



336 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

hold Special privileges that have vast money value. And 
it is invariably found that these special interests join 
hands with the lawless and depraved members of society 
in securing the election of corrupt and compliant men. 

Akin to this is the corrupt use of money in social and 
political affairs. The way in which many great rail- 
roads, street railways, gas, and water companies have 
obtained valuable franchises is a matter of public scandal. 
The power of organized money in city and State and 
national elections is tremendous, and every legislative 
body has felt its baleful and dangerous touch. Hon. 
Wayne MacVeagh has said that the black flag of the 
corruptionist is more to be feared than the red flag of 
the anarchist. A recent writer, who is utterly opposed to 
socialism, and cannot be accused of any antipathy to 
wealth, writes : " It is not the existence of inherited 
wealth, even on a very large scale, that is likely to shake 
seriously the respect for property : it is the many examples 
which the conditions of modern society present, of vast 
wealth acquired by shameful means, employed for shame- 
ful purposes, and exercising an altogether undue influence 
in society and in the State. When triumphant robbery 
is found among the rich, subversive doctrines will grow 
among the poor. When democracy turns, as it often 
does, into a corrupt plutocracy, both national decadence 
and social revolution are being prepared" (Lecky, 
''Democracy and Liberty," Vol. II, pp. 501, 502). 

It may be admitted that some of this corruption is more 
or less inevitable while human nature is as it is. Some 
there are who tell us that these questions of corruption 
are at bottom individual questions; the character of the 
mass depends upon the character of the units; and so 
long as you have depraved men to deal with, so long 
you will have corruption in the State. All this is trite 
enough, but it is too trite to touch the real heart of the 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 337 

difficulty. In his autobiography, John Stuart Mill has 
indicated some of the convictions that grew in his life 
and determined his conduct. He saw that interest in the 
common good is now so weak a motive in the generality 
of men, not because it never can be otherwise, but be- 
cause the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it 
dwells from morning to night on the things that tend only 
to personal advantage. "The deep-rooted selfishness 
which forms the general character of the existing state of 
society, is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course 
of existing institutions tends to foster it; and modern 
institutions, in some respects more than ancient, since 
the occasions on which the individual is called to do any- 
thing for the public without receiving its pay, are far 
less frequent in modern life, than in the smaller common- 
wealths of antiquity" (Mill, "Autobiography," p. 233). 
This problem of corruption is a real one, and be its 
sources personal or social, due to wrong ways of thought 
or defective institutions in society, the very existence of 
the State and its progress in moral life depend upon its 
solution. This corruption in society threatens the very 
life of the State, for a democratic and Christian State 
must be both honest and pure. 

III. The Problem of Intemperance. One of the chief 
concerns of every State is its own preservation. One of 
the prime means to this end is the self-control and so- 
briety of the people. This is important under every form 
of government, but is absolutely essential in a democratic 
government. Democracy is organized self-control, and 
democracy is but a name when self-control is lost. 

In the democratic State it is absolutely necessary that 
men be sober and practise self-control. That men may 
fulfil the duties of their citizenship they must be calm 
and rational; they must possess the ability to view all 
public questions without passion and prejudice ; and with 
w 



338 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

it all they must learn to subordinate self to the common 
life, and must take thought for the common safety. That 
the use of intoxicants of all kinds unfits men for the 
discharge of these duties; that the common use of such 
intoxicants injures them mentally and physically, and 
their excessive use wholly unfits them for citizenship in 
the State, is known to all. That intoxicants have a 
peculiar power over the kingliest powers of the soul; 
that they weaken the rational and volitional faculties of 
man is known to all students of psychology and common 
life. And hence it is that intemperance is one of the life 
and death problems of the democratic State. 

The more intelligently one studies this problem the 
more difficult does its solution appear. It is not by any 
means the simple problem that some suppose, and there 
is no patent panacea that will effect an immediate cure. 
For, the moment we study this evil of intemperance in 
its sources, we find that three of the strongest and most 
constant passions of the human heart are at its roots. 
First, we have the love of gain. There are great financial 
interests at stake in this traffic. There are vast profits 
both in the manufacture and sale of intoxicants, and 
some of the great fortunes on both sides of the Atlantic 
have been made in this business. In all ages and lands 
moralists and legislators have recognized the fatal power 
of gold to warp the judgment and bias the mind ; for the 
sake of money it is found that men will sell their manhood 
and will place stumbling-blocks before their fellows; 
for the sake of money men will seek to create the appe- 
tite for intoxicants in every new generation ; for the sake 
of increasing their revenues they will persuade men to 
drink beyond the safety line, and will evade and counter- 
act the laws wherever possible. Secondly, we have the 
appetite for stimulants. The craving for stimulants is 
a strong instinct in human beings. In all ages and lands 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 339 

men have found that alcohohc beverages possess the 
pecuhar power of producing temporary stimulation of 
their mental and physical being. In addition to the com- 
mon craving for stimulants, there is an abnormal craving 
that is induced by the struggle and stress of modern 
industrial and social life. At any rate, from one cause 
and another, this appetite is created in men; and when 
once developed it is imperious in its demands. The appe- 
tite for alcoholic stimulants is an abnormal one, but it is 
a common craving; and the appetite, when once formed, is 
most potent in its sway. Thirdly, the instinct for social 
fellowship. Man is by nature a social being, and the 
desire for fellowship is one of the strongest instincts of 
his nature. The saloon is the most democratic institution 
in the world, and all men are made welcome and no 
questions asked. In the saloon men find brilliant lights 
and good cheer ; here they find social fellowship and free 
conversation. The modern saloon has such a strong hold 
because it supplies a social need. It supplies that need in 
a very questionable and unsatisfactory way, but it supplies 
it as no other existing institution does. 

In veriest truth it may be said that this traffic is a 
stumbling-block that lies right across the path of the 
State, and the State cannot truly advance till this stum- 
bling-block is removed. The liquor traffic is a standing 
menace to popular government, and intemperance is one 
of the most urgent problems of the modern State. 

IV. The Problem of the Disinherited. In these modern 
times some wholly new- problems have come into the fore- 
ground and are clamoring for solution. We do not mean 
that these new problems are new things in society. There 
is probably not an evil in modern life that is not as old 
as the pyramids and as threadbare as the beggar's coat. 
But, and this is significant, these evils have never been 
felt before as they are felt to-day. For men are coming to 



340 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

social self-consciousness and are becoming sensitive, and 
as a consequence many evils, almost unnoticed heretofore, 
are regarded as problems. One of these clamant modern 
problems is what we may call the problem of the disin- 
herited. 

I. That there is a large class of persons in modern 
society who may be so called is known to all. By the term 
we do not mean that there is a large class who are 
legally disfranchised or formally disinherited, for in the 
foremost nations of the world no such class is found. In 
this respect the modern world is far in advance of the 
ancient. In the republics of Greece, even in their palmiest 
days, there was a large slave population that had no 
political rights and no legal standing. In the empire of 
Rome there was an enormous number of slaves who had 
no recognized rights, and toward whom none had any 
recognized duties. All through the Middle Ages much 
the same conditions obtained. In all these respects a 
great cl]ange has come, and slavery and serfdom are no 
longer found in any recognized and legal form. On 
the other hand, there is some recognition, in a formal way, 
at least, of every person in the State, and some definition 
of his rights. 

It remains true, however, that in the best of modern 
States there is a large class of persons who have no fair 
and real inheritance in society. That this is so is made 
very evident by a study of conditions in our modern cities. 
Thus, in Britain and America — to go no further — we 
find that there is a large class who c6mpose what is 
called the '' Submerged Tenth." Above this is a larger 
class in poverty, who are unable to obtain those neces- 
saries which will permit them to maintain a state of 
physical efficiency. This latter class, according to the 
careful investigations of Charles Booth, numbers thirty 
and seven-tenths per cent, in London " (Hunter, *' Pov- 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 34 1 

^rty," pp. 5, 18). And it appears from these investiga- 
tions that fifty-five per cent, of the very poor and sixty- 
eight per cent, of the other poor are so, not through any 
fault of their own, but simply because they lack employ- 
ment. In London this investigator found that over two 
and a half million people, singly or in companies, live in 
one room— sleeping, cooking, eating, and bathing within 
the same four walls. In Scotland, according to official 
figures, over one-third of the families live in a single 
room, and more than two-thirds in only two rooms. The 
one who walks through the wynds and closes of Edin- 
burgh and Glasgow with open eyes is tempted at times to 
call for the crack of doom to come and end all. 

But the United States is not entirely above reproach 
in these respects. It is true that economic conditions here 
are very much better than in the Old World, but none the 
less the facts are appalling. In 1890, according to Bishop 
Huntington, " recent certified revelations have laid bare 
the multiplied horrors and depravities of the tenement 
population in great cities, where forty-one out of every 
hundred families live in a single room, and where the 
poorest pay more rent than the richest for each cubic foot 
of space and air " (" The Forum," October, 1890). New 
York is one of the richest States in the Union, and yet 
the reports of the State Board of Charities show that 
from year to year about twenty-four per cent, of the 
people apply for relief of some kind. In the year 1903 
fourteen per cent, of the families in Manhattan were 
evicted for various causes. And more tragic than all, 
from year to year ten per cent, of those who die in New 
York are buried in potter's field (" Report of Department 
of Corrections," N. Y., 1902). In 1900, in New York 
State, a commission was created to investigate tenement 
conditions in New York City. After several days' investi- 
gation in silent amazement, the Buffalo members of the 



342 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

commission declared : " New York ought to be abolished." 
The figures given suggest a problem that they do not 
fully define. For, while poverty is a sign and cause of 
this social disinheritance, it is not by any means the 
only sign or cause. Along with this must be named the 
sickness that weakens and makes impossible the highest 
attainments. This problem of sickness and disease is 
one that has been with man from the beginning, and 
may remain with him for some time to come. But 
to-day we are coming to see ever more clearly 
that many of these forms of disease are due to social 
causes, and no longer must be accepted as a matter 
of course. Not only so, but in all of our cities, large or 
small, there is a slum district which is a kind of moral 
maelstrom. In these slum districts thousands of chil- 
dren are born, who by the very circumstances of their 
lives are doomed from the start. Many of them grow up 
ignorant and morally undeveloped; the tender bloom of 
virtue is rubbed off the soul before the girl has learned 
the meaning of purity, and the high possibilities of man- 
hood are blighted before the tendrils of the soul have 
unfolded. 

2. Another aspect of this problem is seen in what may 
be called the industrial exploitation of childhood. That 
this evil of child labor is a very real one, even in the life 
of the foremost nations, is too manifest to require any 
extended proof. It is possible to quote the figures show- 
ing the number of children under fifteen years of age 
toiling in fields and factories, in mines and workshops; 
but figures do not mean very much. Census returns of 
government and reports of industrial commissions show, 
however, that in many parts of the land, in many lines of 
industry and trade, children of tender years are employed 
at tasks that are often hazardous and usually mechanical, 
for long hours, and in conditions that are unsanitary and 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 



343 



depressing. Not only are the children deprived of the 
right to play and the privilege of an education, but their 
very occupation tends inevitably to weaken the body and 
stunt the mind, and thus unfit them for full life and large 
usefulness in the State. The child is made old before 
he is young, and he is early cast aside as so much worn-out 
machinery that is no longer profitable. 

By this system of child labor, society really disinherits 
a large proportion of its members, and forever debars 
them from the best things of life. By it society also loses 
a large fraction of its most valuable asset. There may 
be some industrial gain from this labor of the children ; 
but the losses far outbalance the gain. The fact is, from 
every point of view, child labor is an evil without one 
valid argument in its support or extenuation. It is a 
waste of the nation's most valuable asset, the manhood of 
its people. It is economic suicide, for it produces an 
inert, inefficient mass of laborers. It is wholly unneces- 
sary, for the nations where this evil is most prevalent 
are no longer in need of calling all hands to work. It 
is impossible for a people to tolerate this evil and preserve 
its self-respect while professing faith in the democratic 
creed and maintaining allegiance to the Christian ideal. 
One of the gladdest things that the prophet can say of the 
city that is coming in the new time is this : " The streets 
of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the 
broad places thereof" (Zech. 8:5). 

3. A third aspect of this problem is seen in the inade- 
quate provision that is made, even in the most progressive 
nations, for the full training of each life and its fitness 
for service in the commonwealth. This is too large a 
problem for treatment here, and we can only notice one 
element that makes it so real. Thus, the number of per- 
sons who receive what may be called an adequate educa- 
tion, that is a training that shall unfold their powers and 



344 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

prepare them to co-operate with society in perfecting its 
own life, is comparatively small, even in the most ad- 
vanced and intelligent State. It is true that in some lands 
that are most democratic and Christian, a system of public 
education has been created which aims to provide for every 
child the rudiments of an education. And it is also true 
that in some of these States provision is made for the 
advanced education of many. No one who is familiar 
with the aims and achievements of this system of State 
education can make light of it; in fact, he must see in it 
one of the most auspicious omens for the betterment of 
man. And yet when this has been said, the whole story 
has not been told; for the fact yet remains that this sys- 
tem of education, in its most elementary stages, is not 
accomplishing the results that might be expected, while a 
large proportion of the people are practically debarred 
by circumstances over which they have no control from 
the advantages of a higher education. All this shows 
that even in the most advanced and intelligent society 
there is a large class that is practically disinherited; 
that is, they begin life under a heavy handicap; all 
through life, owing to the lack of opportunity and ade- 
quate training, they are denied access to the best things 
in life. They are wholly unable to rise into better condi- 
tions; the natural powers and latent resources of their 
souls are never nourished into life ; they are what may be 
called the disinherited classes in society. 

These facts have a double significance, a personal and 
a social, and each is deserving of careful consideration. 
In its personal aspect the saddest thing about all this 
ignorance and poverty is not the suffering and ignorance 
themselves, though these are often sad enough ; the most 
tragic thing about it all is the waste of human life, the fact 
that the possibilities of many lives are never unfolded. 
In its social aspects the most tragic fact about it all is 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 345 

this : that in every generation there is a heavy loss of so 
much social possibiHty; that is, so few persons make 
any real and adequate contribution to the total wealth of 
society. The number of persons born in a generation may 
represent the total latent powers and potential resources 
of that generation. But thus far no generation in any 
land has as yet succeeded in developing and garnering 
for the use of society more than one-fifth of the total 
powers and resources of mankind. Through poverty 
and crime, through want of training and lack of oppor- 
tunity, at least four-fifths of the total possibility of any 
one generation is practically undeveloped. Could these 
handicaps be removed, could every person receive an 
adequate education, could the latent powers of all men be 
developed, and could every person receive a fair in- 
heritance in society, the present working forces of society 
could be centupled (Ward ''Applied Sociology/' 234) 
These people so held back are men and women of normal 
minds and human souls, and susceptible, if surrounded by 
the same influences as the educated and moral, of becom- 
ing as capable and intelHgent as they (Ward, ibid., p. 313) 
They possess the same human nature as their more suc- 
cessful brothers, and under different circumstances they 
also might stand upon their feet and become agents of 
civilization and contribute their share to human achieve- 
ment. 

In all times men have observed these facts, but it is 
only in recent times that they have become a problem to 
society itself. In all the earlier times men accepted these 
differences of fortune as a matter of course, and conse- 
quently they felt little responsibility for their removal. 
Thus, in practically every nation in the ancient world, 
It was believed that mankind was composed of several 
varieties of human beings, made of different kinds of 
clay; the best things in life were for the few, while the 



246 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

great mass of the people were made to be underlings and 
servants, hewers of wood and drawers of water, and 
wholly unfitted for culture and progress. At different 
times, in the name of theology, men have defended the 
existing inequalities of society as a part of the decree 
of God, and consequently these differences among men 
were neither to be questioned nor changed. It is a matter 
of record also that the time has been when an English 
bishop actually defended poverty on the ground that it is 
necessary that there be a certain amount of misery in the 
world in order that good people may have some objects 
on which to exercise the grace of charity. It is a matter 
of common knowledge that there are some sociologists, 
even in the most enlightened lands, who regard poverty 
and drink shops as more or less necessary and inevitable. 
For the relentless suppression of the weak and unfit 
through such means, we are told, is nature's method of 
eliminating the unfit and improving the human breed. In 
later times the impression has gained currency that the 
law of nature is struggle for existence with the survival 
of the fittest, with the corollary law that those who do not 
survive are the unfittest and deserve to perish. 

The formal criticism of these views is here impossible, 
and it is not necessary. But it may be said that they one 
and all rest upon what may be called the aristocratic 
view of human nature ; that is, they all assume that there 
are certain differences among men which are natural 
and necessary which can never be wholly eradicated and 
ought never to be ignored. 

Some of these views frankly charge up these differences 
to the decrees of God, and men have not hesitated to 
misapply the words of Scripture and talk about the vessels 
made for dishonor. Other of these views assume that 
there are natural and essential differences in human lives, 
and we have great systems of caste based upon this be- 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 347 

lief. Whatever may be their basis and reason, such views 
all rest, in the last analysis, upon what we have called 
the aristocratic view of human nature. 

But to the modern man these views have become in- 
tolerable, and he can no longer rest under their burden. 
A new spirit, the Christian democratic spirit, has arisen 
and challenges every one of these views. According to 
this, men are all brothers in one family because children of 
one Father; they are all made of the same clay, and hence 
they all have the same nature and capabilities. Men are 
different in mental endowments and talents, but these 
are merely incidental and external; in essence they are 
alike and equal, and each has the same value and meaning 
as the other. Every child in the State has his place in the 
State, and his life has some meaning in the total meaning 
of society. There is no reason in the nature of things 
why a few should have a large fraction of this heritage 
while the great majority are practically disinherited. The 
Father has made provision for all his children, and his 
bounties are for all alike. This defines the problem that 
modern society must solve, if it would be Christian in 
spirit and democratic in form. And this defines a task 
which we shall consider in another chapter, " The Pro- 
gramme of the Christian Society." 

V. The Problem of the Unfit. Akin to the problem 
just named, and related to the problem next to be con- 
sidered, is another which is no less vital and significant. 
In a way it may be regarded as the problem of all prob- 
lems, the one problem that has the most intimate relation 
to the progress and the welfare of man. This is what 
we may call the problem of the unfit. 

The history of progress, it has been said, is the record 
of the gradual diminution of waste. In all the lower 
stages of life the amount of waste is enormous, and com- 
paratively few living creatures reach maturity. As we 



348 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

rise in the scale we find that the amount of waste is 
diminishing, and fewer creatures perish in the struggle. 
In the higher stages, among civilized men, this waste is 
reduced to the minimum, and life has a higher value. The 
history of civilization, as Professor Huxley assures us, is 
the record of the attempts which the human race has 
made to escape from the unchecked sway of the principle 
of the struggle for existence with the destruction of the 

unfittest. 

But this struggle for existence is not by any means 
the meaningless and cruel thing that it may at first sight 
appear to be. It is nature's way of detecting superiority 
and of declaring the qualities that are worthful in life. 
In the jungle, where Hfe is little else than a free fight, 
only those creatures who are possessed of full vitality and 
alert senses have any chance of surviving ; the weak and 
crippled, the dull-eyed and heavy-footed are doomed, 
and inevitably perish. In a savage society, where the 
struggle is little modified by intelligent and moral action, 
the number who fail to survive is quite large, for the 
weak and defective, the diseased and crippled soon perish. 
There are no mental and physical weaklings ; the diseased 
and malformed receive no care, and they unfailingly die. 
The struggle is severe, and the results are tragic, but by 
this process the blood of the tribe is kept comparatively 
pure, and the highest efficiency of the clan is maintained. 
It is easy, of course, for one to condemn all this as a mark 
of human depravity, and in a higher stage of society it 
would be worthy of all condemnation. But behind it all 
there is the effort on the part of the tribe to maintain 
its own existence and to preserve the highest standard. 
The struggle for a bare existence is hard, and the tribe 
cannot afford to carry any superfluous impediments 
without endangering its own Hfe. 

But in a civilized and moral society all this is changed, 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 349 

and emphasis is now thrown upon the factors of altruism 
and social philanthropy. The Christian spirit has created 
many types of eleemosynary effort, and a studied desire 
is shown to minister to the less endowed and keep every 
human infant alive. Not only so, but in the progress of 
society there has been evolved various methods of medical 
practice which result in lessening disease and lengthening 
human life. To-day medical science that is motived by 
the spirit of Christ declares that no single life in the com- 
munity shall live uncared for or shall die if its life can be 
prolonged. In a large way it may be said that society is 
intelligent and civilized and Christian in the degree that 
its members practise mutual aid and live for the common 
life. In a large way, also, it may be said that a society is 
uncivilized and barbarous in the degree in which its 
members neglect the weak and permit them to perish. 
This concern for the weak, this effort to help the helpless, 
is proper and right, and every lover of his kind must 
rejoice in this triumph of love and science over disease 
and death. 

But all this raises a problem that is one of the most 
real and fateful that society has to meet. Is all this a real 
benefit to the race, or is it a fatal injury ? We may grant 
that the principle of natural selection is ruthless so far as 
its results are concerned, but it must be admitted that this 
principle is of great service in detecting the unfit and elim- 
inating them. To set aside this principle, and to carry the 
other principle of social aid to its full conclusions, we are 
told, will produce results that are disastrous; in fact, to 
do this, we are assured, will mean the steady weakening 
and inevitable deterioration of the human race. Thus the 
scientist and the sociologist tell us in solemn language 
that the modern methods of philanthropy are a mistaken 
and suicidal policy, for they mean the poisoning of the 
blood, and will result in the retardation rather than the 



350 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

acceleration of progress. Thus, Herbert Spencer finds 
fault with modern governmental and social organizations 
on the ground that they are interfering with the beneficial 
operation of the universal law of natural selection. " In- 
convenience, suffering, and death are the penalties at- 
tached by nature to ignorance, as well as incompetence — 
are also means of remedying these. Partly by breeding 
out those of lowest development, and partly by subjecting 
those who remain to the never-ceasing discipline of ex- 
perience, nature secures the growth of a race who shall 
both understand the conditions of existence, and be able 
to act up to them. It is best to let the foolish man suffer 
the penalty of his foolishness. . . A sad population of 
imbeciles would our schemers fill the world with could 
their plans last. Why, the whole effort of nature is to 
get rid of such — to clear the world of them and make 
room for better" ("Social Statics. Sanitary Supervi- 
sion"). "Will any one contend that no mischief will 
result," he asks, " if the lowly endowed are enabled to 
thrive and multiply as much as, or more than, the highly 
endowed ? " To the same purport speaks the sociologist. 
Thus Prof. E. A. Ross says, " The shortest way to make 
this world a heaven is to let those so inclined hurry hell- 
ward at their own pace." Hence he deduces the social 
canon : " Social interference should not be so paternal 
as to check the self-extinction of the morally ill-consti- 
tuted " (Ross, " Social Control," p. 425). He maintains 
that many of our so-called charitable and philanthropic 
efforts and methods are simply preserving the unfit, and 
are thus poisoning the blood of the race. 

It is easy, of course, for one to grow piously indignant 
and to denounce all this as brutal indifference and scien- 
tific hard-heartedness. But none the less there is here a 
grave danger, one that must be recognized and avoided, 
or the race will pay the forfeit. The universe sets a 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 35 1 

premium upon efficiency and fitness, and any method that 
enables the unfit and defective to survive and perpetuate 
their kind is a gross and fatal violation of the order of 
things. Modern society, however, being more and more 
motived by the spirit of Christ, will never again allow 
the defective and unfit to live uncared for and to die un- 
. pitied. In fact, as time goes on, the Christian spirit will 
more and more summon to its aid scientific knowledge to 
keep the weakest and unfittest from perishing in the 
struggle. And modern society, having an intelligent 
concern for its own interests, will not be willing to allow 
the unfit and defective to survive and perpetuate their 
kind to the disadvantage and detriment of the race. Is 
there any way out of this dilemma ? Or must the Chris- 
tian spirit and the scientific mind work at cross purposes? 
This, at least, states one of the most puzzling problems 
of modern society— the problem of the unfit. 

Modern society motived by the Christian spirit must 
declare that there shall be no unfit and defective members 
in the State. This means several things that are worth 
a moment's consideration. For one thing, it means that 
modern society must put all its resources in pledge in be- 
half of the weakest and least promising member, that he 
may be lifted up into strength and fitness. Modern sci- 
ence and Christian philanthropy must direct their energies 
toward the creation of conditions that will prevent the 
making of the unfit and defective. The unfit must not 
be allowed to remain the unfit, but must be transformed 
into the fit. The science of medicine and the practice of 
charity have put into our hands certain systems of moral 
splints and braces, certain remedies and appliances, which 
enable us to keep the unfit and defective alive. The 
Christian spirit is here, and is becoming the moving power 
in men's lives; they hold in their hands a vast system of 
prophylactic and moral remedies and braces; the scien- 



352 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

tific and sociological spirit must show society what to 
do in order to provide for its future welfare ; and society 
itself must then put its resources in pledge in behalf of 
the proposition that there shall be no unfit. This is a 
great undertaking, and it may require long generations 
for man to reach the goal. But this is a task that society 
must undertake in a brave and hopeful spirit, in the con- 
viction that though everything may not be done at once, 
something may be done that will bring it nearer the goal. 
It is worth something to know the problem before us; 
and we have gained much when we know the direction 
of true progress.^ 

VI. The Social Problem. In human progress some 
political problems have been solved and their solution has 
been formulated in written constitutions. In the mean- 
time, however, other problems have come to the front 
and are now clamoring for solution. Progress may mean 
the solution of problems, but progress no less means the 
multiplication of problems. Three generations ago De 
Tocqueville declared that the problems before men at the 
beginning of the nineteenth century were political; then, 
with remarkable prescience, he foretold that the problems 
at the beginning of the twentieth century would be 
social. And this prophecy suggests the sphinx riddle that 
is now propounded to men and must be solved by society. 
We cannot pass this social problem by, for the reason 
that it is vitally related to the very existence of democracy 
and the honor of Christianity. Those who are interested 
in this problem will consult the careful studies that have 
been made by John Hobson in "The Social Problem," 
and Lester F. Ward, in his various books; by Robert 
Hunter, in " Poverty," and John Graham Brooks, in " The 

1 For a fuller discussion of this problem, with the suggestion of some remedies, the 
reader is referred to an article, "The Redemption of the Unfit," in "The American 
Journal of Sociology," September, 1908. 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 353 

Social Unrest " ; by Prof. R. T. Ely and Prof. William 
Graham; by my friend Prof. Walter Rauschenbusch, in 
" Christianity and the Social Crisis " ; by Prof. Francis G. 
Peabody, in his two noteworthy studies, and by innumer- 
able other workers in this special field. And whether one 
is a socialist or not, he should not neglect such men as 
Karl Marx, in his great work, " Capital " ; or Blatchford, 
in his suggestive plea " Merrie England " ; or Loria, in 
"Economic Foundations of Society"; or Labriola, in 
"Materialistic Conception of History''; or Henry 
George, in " Progress and Poverty," and his other books ; 
or Benjamin Kidd, in " Social Evolution " and " Western 
Civilization." In fact, it seems almost invidious to name 
any special students in this field when there are so man> 
earnest workers. Several factors enter into this problem 
and make at once its difficulty and its urgency. 

I. In the more advanced Western nations political 
democracy has been gained and the people have become 
sovereign. But, as we have seen, in the chapter on the 
unfinished tasks of democracy, this has not by any means 
brought the people either liberty or contentment. In 
fact, the free citizen in the political State finds himself 
under bonds that are most irksome and galling. He finds 
that while in certain realms and relations his rights are 
defined and safeguarded, yet in other realms and relations 
they are wholly undefined and gross injustice is done. He 
may vote as a free citizen, but he is taxed without any 
representation, and government is without his consent. 
He may exercise his fraction of sovereignty in the po- 
litical State, but he discovers that he is rated as a " hand " 
in an industrial class and has little real initiative in life. 
It is vain, as De Laveleye has said, to call the tramp of 
the street a sovereign when he is a proletarian. It is vain, 
as any one can see, to glorify one's political privileges so 
long as he has no social opportunity. " Liberty," said 

X 



354 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Carlyle, '' I am told, is a divine thing. Liberty, when it 
becomes the liberty to die by starvation, is not so divine." 

2. Again, in the most advanced lands of the Western 
world there has been a remarkable increase of material 
wealth. And this wealth, it may be said, is of various 
kinds, and includes practically all of the means of man's 
physical and intellectual life. The nineteenth century 
solved one problem at least — the problem how to create 
the most wealth in the least time. Machinery has multi- 
plied man's productive power many fold, and has cor- 
respondingly multiplied the commodities at his disposal. 
Indeed, machinery answereth almost all things, and at 
best man's labor is the superintendence of a machine. 

But what is the result of it all, we may ask? Is the 
struggle of life less keen and wasteful than in the bad 
times of old ? Is man, liberated from the toil and moil of 
life, now learning how to live the glad, free life of the 
spirit, and to rejoice as the emancipated citizen of the 
kingdom? In his day John Stuart Mill declared that it 
was an open question whether machinery had really 
lightened the burden of a single human being. In our 
times many things indicate that the increase of machinery 
is begetting a new slavery and is weighting man's load. 
Man is becoming the slave of the machine, and his work 
is more exhausting than ever. The machine may have 
been intended to serve mankind and to lighten its load, but 
it is enslaving the man and is tightening his chain. In 
fiction the inventor created his Frankenstein, a great 
creature in the semblance of a man, but without brain 
or soul, and only to be destroyed at last by the monster 
he had made. The fiction of the novelist, we are gravely 
told, is becoming the reality of our civilization. 

3. And once more, in these Western lands, the home of 
democracy, we find that humanity has come into a 
marvelous heritage of knowledge and wealth. And this 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 355 

social heritage, which represents the common toil of the 
fathers, is the common heritage of the children. In the 
wisdom and beneficence of God abundant provision has 
been made for all the needs of men, and there is plenty and 
to spare in the Father's house. It is only in recent times 
that man has begun to appraise the extent of this pro- 
vision, but every year he is discovering ever new stores 
of wealth, and is tapping ever fresh reservoirs of power. 
But a few men have gained control of these natural 
resources, and are now exploiting them for their own 
advantage. They claim exclusive access to these re- 
sources, and other men who would enjoy these must ob- 
tain their permission and pay them tribute. From one 
cause and another, through neglect or inattention, 
through bad management or gross fraud, this social 
heritage has passed into the hands of a few 
privileged persons, and the great majority of the 
people have but a secondary share in the social inherit- 
ance. And, as the corollary of this, we find that " a 
large proportion of the population in the prevailing 
state of society take part in the rivalry of life only under 
conditions which absolutely preclude them, whatever their 
natural merit or ability, from any real chance therein. 
They come into the world to find the best positions not 
only already filled, but practically occupied in perpetuity. 
For, under the great body of rights which wealth has in- 
herited from feudalism, we, to all intents and purposes, 
allow the wealthy classes to retain the control of these 
positions for generation after generation, to the perma- 
nent exclusion of the rest of the people " (Kidd, " Social 
Evolution," p. 232). 

It is easy, of course, for one who is so inclined, to say 
that this is such a gross exaggeration of the social situation 
as to amount to a positive caricature. But this is the con- 
firmed conviction of such brave thinkers and careful 



356 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

sociologists as Ruskin and Mazzini, Ward and Kidd. And 
it is easy also for one who is so inclined, to say that those 
who have no heritage and portion in society have them- 
selves to blame, while those who possess so much of 
wealth and privilege have themselves to thank. But we 
may note that many of those who control these resources 
have gained this control through methods that are neither 
wholly fair nor socially just. In any fair and just society 
there should be some proportion between service and re- 
ward, but in modern society this proportion is not always 
maintained (Ward, '' Psychic Factors of CiviHzation," 
p. 321). In his day John Stuart Mill declared that in' 
such a society as the present the very idea of justice, 
or any proportionality between success and merit, or 
between success and exertion, is " so chimerical as to be 
relegated to the region of romance." 

4. And this brings us face to face with the problem of 
modern democracy, called by way of preeminence the so- 
cial problem. This problem is the problem of social wel- 
fare; the problem how to bring greater happiness and 
larger possibility to all men ; the problem how to equalize 
opportunity and thus enable each life to realize its highest 
capabilities; the problem how to bring the disinherited 
into the Father's family and to give them a fair inherit- 
ance in society. In any enduring commonwealth each 
man has his place and his work, and no commonwealth is 
either democratic or Christian till this man has found that 
place and is doing that work. The social problem is how 
to use the resources of society in promoting the whole 
life of the whole people, and thus enabling the laggards to 
march with the main army. Of all the problems of the 
modern man, the one which towers above all others, is 
the problem of the organization of society, so that the 
heritage of the past shall be transmitted to all its members 
alike (Ward, ''Applied Sociology," p. 96). Stated in 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 357 

different terms, the problem manifestly is how to secure 
to the members of society the maximum power of exci- 
cising their natural faculties (Ward, ibid, p. 25, 26). It is 
too early in the day for any one to forecast the future and 
to indicate the measures that must be taken to ensure this 
result. But Mazzini spoke with his usual insight when he 
said : " I think that our problem is not so much to define 
the forms of future progress as to place the individual 
under such conditions as make it easy for him to under- 
stand and fulfil it" ("Life," by King, p. 289). 

The great problem of to-day is this social problem. The 
problem of to-day is not primarily a personal problem, 
and it is not distinctively a political problem. It is not 
how to make good individuals, for in a way this has been 
achieved ; the problem now is to associate these good 
individuals and make a good society. The problem of 
to-day is not distinctively political, for political liberty and 
democracy have been won in these Western lands, and 
government of the people and by the people is approxi- 
mately a fact ; the problem now .is to build a better society 
in which industrial democracy shall be a reality and men 
shall have a fair opportunity in life. The whole question 
how men shall live together in equality and peace and share 
in the common inheritance of society, is up for discus- 
sion, and upon the answer to this question depends the 
progress of mankind and the success and permanence of 
democratic government. 

Growing out of what has been said are several very 
important conclusions. 

First, modern society must face these problems and 
must then set about their solution. The time has gone by 
when men can put on blinders and refuse to see; and 
the time has gone by also when discontent can be quieted 
by the policeman's club. The people have begun to think, 
and they are coming to self-consciousness. And so they 



358 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

are questioning old formulas and are searching for 
social justice. The people will insist that every question 
be brought out into the light and they will demand that 
it be tried by the standards of public welfare. No 
thought is safe which would keep thought out. No ques- 
tion is settled till it is settled right. It is vain, therefore, 
to cry peace, peace, and seek in this way to allay dis- 
content. It is folly to cover up the wounds of society 
and refuse to admit that society is afflicted. We never 
can have peace in society till we first have righteousness. 
We never can have a healthy body so long as there are 
poisonous sores beneath the surface. 

Again, there may be problems in modern society, but 
there are no isolated reforms. The world is full of men 
who are specialists in reform as well as in medicine. This 
is necessary, perhaps, to a certain degree, but specialism 
may easily be carried too far and become too exclusive. 
We find that in our modern world men divide up into 
little groups and schools, each studying some one prob- 
lem and each advocating some one reform. This is neces- 
sary, perhaps, for some of these problems need special 
study and emphasis. But society is a unit and organic; 
one thing is as it is because all other things are as they 
are. It may be necessary to have special schools of special 
reform, such as the single tax and prohibition, direct 
legislation, and State socialism ; but it is necessary also to 
remember that no one of these schemes of reform holds 
the key to the millennium. The frank admission of this 
fact would make superfluous a vast amount of moving 
rhetoric, but it would also make necessary a more organic 
scheme of progress. Society is a unit and our reforms 
must be unified. No isolated scheme can be a good 
scheme. Real progress must be advanced all along 
the line. Those who see only one thing can never 
see that truly, and so they work in a superficial and 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN STATE 359 

mistaken manner. Idealism ought to be organic; that is 
to say, each particular ideal ought to be formed and pur- 
sued in subordination to a system of ideals, based on 
knowledge and good sense (Cooley, "The American 
Journal of Sociology," March, 1907). 

And thirdly, society must face its problems in the con- 
fidence that there are no insoluble problems. Man is 
here under God to work out his destiny, and he is com- 
missioned to rule the earth and subdue it to his purposes. 
He is called in the providence of God to build in the earth 
a city of God. There are no necessary evils. There are 
no insoluble problems. Whatever is wrong cannot be 
eternal, and whatever is right cannot be impossible. 

Every problem is an opportunity. The clear statement 
of a problem is one-half of its solution ; at any rate, there 
can be no solution of an unclear problem. Some of these 
modern problems are before us, and they must be faced 
by the modern Christian who believes in democracy. In 
their study and solution man will prove at once the sin- 
cerity of his faith and the strength of his virtue. Modern 
society is confronted with more real and more urgent 
problems than was ancient society; and this means that 
the modern man has more real and more practical ways 
than the ancient man of proving his faith and hope and 
love and wisdom. 



XIV 

THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 

IT is the constant and characteristic quality of life to 
become organic. It is the steady and supreme effort 
of life to create around itself a body in which it shall 
realize its type, and through which it shall express its 
power. It follows, as a matter of course, that the quality 
of the life will determine the form of the organization; 
and it is almost a tautology to say that the method of 
the organization will reveal the quality of the life both in 
itself and its relations. 

The State is the people organized in a political capacity 
to promote the welfare of all its members. Democracy 
is the confession in social and political relations of the 
highest faith of a people. In the Christian conception of 
things we have the ideal of a human society on earth, a 
kingdom of God that has become the kingdom of man. 
Since this is so, there are certain great aims that a Chris- 
tian and democratic people must set before themselves; 
there are certain definite tasks to which a democratic and 
Christian society is fully committed. In the last chapter 
we shall consider the nature of the Christian State, and 
we may postpone for the present some of the objections 
that are brought against this whole conception. Without 
forestalling the argument of that chapter we may here 
concern ourselves with those aims that are implied in 
the Christian conception of the State; that is, we may 
limit ourselves to those tasks which are involved in these 
converging lines of thought. In a word, we are concerned 
with that programme which men with the Christian spirit, 
360 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 361 

believing in the great principles of democracy, will seek 
in and through the political State. 

In view of all the facts in the case, in view of the ideal 
of the kingdom of God on earth, and the relation of the 
State to the welfare of man, it is necessary that we have 
some definite conception of the ideal to be realized in and 
|through the State and some knowledge of the steps that 
must be taken in the realization of that ideal. In ancient 
and modern times alike there has been little vision of the 
great goal of the State, and so there has been little united 
effort to realize a large and comprehensive programme. 
There has been progress, but it has been more or less hap- 
hazard and accidental. Men have corrected great abuses 
and have made many advances, but they have usually 
been opportunists and politicians, working only for some 
local and partial good when they might have been seers 
and statesmen working for great and far-reaching ends. 
In ancient and modern times alike there have been some 
great and prophetic souls who have had visions and 
dreamed dreams, men who were pioneers and pathfinders, 
showing humanity the way and helping the world toward 
Its goal; and their influence upon their generation and 
people cannot be measured by any mete-wand. And yet, 
it must be confessed that the number of such souls is 
pitifully small; and worse than all, they have usually 
shared the untoward fate of all prophets and pioneers. 

This is not all ; but the men of to-day, the men upon 
whom the ends of the ages are come, cannot show much 
advantage over the men of yesterday. One of the most 
interesting and yet saddening inquiries to-day is a careful 
study of the platforms and policies of the great political 
parties, whether in Great Britain or the United States. 
In these platforms much is said about liberty and prog- 
ress, about free trade and protection ; in these pronounce- 
ments there are many paragraphs in denunciation of the 



362 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

follies and failures of the opposition party, with many 
appeals to the people to support a particular platform. 
But one will read these platforms in vain for any con- 
structive ideal ; not one word will he find which indicates 
the true direction of human progress ; in fact, he will scan 
them in vain for any comprehensive conception of what 
human progress means. So also one may listen to the 
great political leaders who are much in the public eye and 
solicit the people's suffrage. But he will listen in vain to 
their orations for any great words of light and leading; 
he will vainly watch for the words which shall point out 
the way of human advance ; and at last he will turn away 
without having learned one syllable about the real mission 
of the State and the whole progress of man. He will find 
that there is no clear vision of the goal or any definite 
understanding of the way to the goal. He will find that 
there is no great ideal before men which shall include 
and explain all lower ideals ; there is no social synthesis 
that can marshal the people as one army and send them 
forth to do battle with the ills of life, and to seek the 
perfection of society. 

In view of all this, the time has come, we must believe, 
for men to consider well the great goal of the social 
State and then to define some of the steps that lead to it. 
The time has come in the progress of man and the devel- 
opment of Christian thought to define the ideal of human 
society and to formulate some programme of social 
advance. The State will fulfil its calling in the world 
when men have both an idea of the State's mission and 
end, and a worthy and Christian programme of social and 
political action. It is better to live on the small arc of 
an infinite circle than to compass the whole area of a ten- 
foot circumference. 

It is too early in the day for any one to formulate such 
a final programme of political action; it is, in fact, a 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 363 

grave presumption for any one age to attempt to define 
the task of a later age. Hence every programme must 
be more or less provisional and provincial ; for the idea 
and ideal of to-day must be outgrown to-morrow. But 
none the less to-day ought to have its ideals and policies, 
for only in this way can the larger to-morrow be realized! 
We do not want a hard and fast programme with all its 
Items fully defined; but we must have some sense of 
direction in social progress, and must know some of the 
paths that lead to the goal. All we can do is to note a 
few of the more marked items, with a few suggestions as 
to their scope. We rejoice to believe that every one of 
these aims is revealed, in germ at least, in the best modern 
States. But we desire to see them in their whole applica- 
tion become the conscious and constant aim of all States. 
And we are not careful to determine how far these aims 
are to be sought through political action alone, and how 
far they are to be realized through so-called spiritual 
agencies. As a matter of fact, the State, at bottom, is a 
spiritual institution ; and spiritual principles must realize 
themselves at last in political institutions. In this chapter 
we shall suggest a few of those aims which men must 
set before themselves if they would be true to the ideal 
of Christ and would move forward in the direction of true 
progress. 

I. The Steady Pressure Against All Things that are 
Harmful to Man and Hurtful in Society. According to 
the best interpreters, it is the work and function of^he 
State to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, 
provide for the common defense, and promote the general 
welfare. In the prophetic hope of Israel we have the con- 
ception of a State in which a king reigns in righteousness, 
and where justice is done throughout the land, a society 
from^ which all evil and hurtful things have been cast, 
and in which only good things are permitted. In the 



364 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Christian apocalypse we have the vision of a Holy City 
coming down from God out of heaven, to be set up on 
earth, a city into which nothing enters that defiles, that 
works abomination, or that makes a lie; a city from 
which all evil things have been removed and cast into the 
lake of fire. Beneath all this drapery of prophecy and 
apocalypse there is the definite and splendid vision of a 
society that hates the things that are evil, and gives them 
no recognized place in its life. Beyond all the local and 
transient elements in these visions there abides the con- 
ception of a society that maintains a steady pressure 
against the things that are evil and injurious. Combining 
these functions of the State and these visions of Christian- 
ity, interpreting the functions of the State in the light of 
these Christian hopes, carrying these prophetic visions 
into the State to guide its action, a very definite result 
follows and a very plain duty is seen. We have the con- 
ception of a society that exerts a steady pressure against 
all things that are evil and defiling, a society that makes a 
collective effort to take up all stumbling-blocks out of 
the way of the people and to cast up straight paths for 

men's feet. 

The State, in the last analysis, is the institute of right 
relations and the conserver of human welfare. It is 
called to interpret these relations and to define the things 
that make for social peace. It is the one agency through 
which the people can act in their interpretation of social 
welfare, in their search after righteousness, and their 
struggles in behalf of social progress. As men become 
more Christian, as they understand more fully the higher 
functions of the State, and seek more consciously the 
Christian ideal, they will more and more unite in making 
the State the medium of their search after righteousness 
and the agency of their warfare against evil. As the 
State becomes more Christian it will exert a steady 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 365 

and increasing pressure against all things that are evil, 
and will maintain a steady purpose in behalf of virtue. 
Are there customs and institutions and agencies in society 
that are tempting and demoralizing in their tendency? 
Then the State will exert a steady opposition to these 
things, and will seek to cast them out of its life. In so far 
as the State exerts this constant pressure against evil, and 
makes this collective effort in behalf of righteousness, 
does it possess the first characteristic of the Christian 
State. 

There are many things that the State can do in this 
direction, and in behalf of these ends. For one thing, it 
can define those courses of conduct that are hurtful to 
society, and thus can warn men back into the right way. 
It can vindicate in the visible order those high and safe 
principles of right and wrong, which aie woven into the 
very texture of human society. Some forms of evil, it is 
possible, will continue for a long time, and the State may 
never wholly suppress them. But none the less it can 
make vice unprofitable and crime hazardous. It can take 
up the stumbling-blocks out of the way of the people, and 
can provide conditions that make a virtuous Hfe possible. 
For a long time to come there may be men of evil will, 
men who, for the sake of their own advantage or their own 
pleasure, will place temptation before their brothers, and 
will make profit out of their fall. But when these things 
are done, wherever men are breaking human relations and 
are injuring their fellows, the State— acting in behalf of 
the common safety — must punish the offenders and must 
break up their man-traps. It can place under a ban all 
agencies and institutions whose tendency is to hurt man 
and to demoralize society, and it can labor for their 
suppression. 

These are some of the tasks that the State cannot evade 
if it would be either human or Christian. Toward all 



366 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

such evils the attitude of the State must be one of 
unchanging and relentless opposition, and with these 
things it can make no terms and permit no exception. 
For the State to declare by its legislation that a certain 
institution is socially demoralizing, and yet by its action 
to recognize that institution, is to stultify itself and 
discount its Christian profession. In the positive lan- 
guage of the Supreme Court of the United States : " No 
legislation can barter away the public health or the public 
morals. The people themselves cannot do it, much less 
their servants. Government is organized with a view 
to their preservation, and cannot divest itself of the power 
to provide for them" (Stone vs. Mississippi, loi, U. S. 
816). In view of all this, the charge that by such State 
action we are attempting to legislate men into the king- 
dom of God is as inane as it is pernicious. That thinking 
men should have fallen into this blunder almost passes 
comprehension. In all this no effort is made to legislate 
men into the kingdom of God; but an effort is made to 
remove the obstacles that may keep men out of that 
kingdom. The State may not be able to eliminate many 
/ of the evils of society for a long time to come, but it can 
at least maintain a steady pressure against them; it can 
create and organize a sentiment hostile to them, and by 
legislation it can declare that they are illegal and wrong; 
it can provide that they never shall become accepted and 
.-legitimated institutions in society; by legal penalties it 
can make their continuance hazardous and their practice 
unprofitable; in fine, by a steady opposition to these 
things, it may oppose them and wear them down and ' 
crowd them out. The State can do much, possibly as 
' much as the Church, to develop the social conscience of 

men and create a presumption in favor of virtue and 
morality. Thus the State that is becoming Christian will 
exert a steady pressure against all forms of social evil 



THE PROGRAAIME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 367 

and will seek to remove the stumbling-blocks out of the 
way of the people. There are no necessary evils. 

II. The Administration of Justice With a Saving Pur- 
pose. In every State we find a large class of persons who 
constitute what is called in an indefinite way the criminal 
class. The presence of such a class endangers the peace 
of society, and entails heavy burdens upon the State; for 
the cost of crime first and last is one of the heaviest items 
in the State's budget. But passing the money cost of 
crime, the presence of such a criminal population in the 
modern State is one of the most perplexing problems of 
the Christian citizen. It discounts the power of Chris- 
tianity and casts reproach upon our Christian civilization. 
For this reason it is becoming the cause of earnest heart- 
searching and social inquiry. 

The aim of the State which we here consider has two 
aspects, which in the last analysis are reduced to one 
It defines all those efforts of the State to reform and save 
ofifenders against its order ; and it implies also all those 
eflforts to save men from going wrong at all. The first 
efifort of the State leads on to the second, and so the one 
necessitates the other. 

The history of the world's treatment of its delinquents 
IS one of the darkest pages in the volume of human mis- 
deeds. The time has been when men regarded all punish- 
ment for crime as a just retribution ; the wrong-doer must 
always be punished, and the more severe and brutal the 
punishment the better society was pleased and the safer 
men felt. No regard was paid to the physical or moral 
condition of prisoners, and no effort was made to separate 
the child prisoner from old and hardened criminals. At 
the beginning of the nineteenth century there were in 
England two hundred and twenty-three capital offenses, 
and some of these were of the most trivial nature. At 
that time a judge could avow from the bench his belief 



368 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

that there was no hope of regenerating a felon in this Ufe ; 
and as his continued existence would only diffuse a cor- 
rupting influence upon others, it was hence better for his 
own sake, as well as for the sake of society, that he 
should be hanged as speedily as possible (Mackenzie, 
"Nineteenth Cent.," Bk. II, chap. i). 

But a new spirit has arisen in these later times, and 
has wrought a great change. This new spirit, which is 
at once Christian and scientific, is beginning to affect 
men's social and political life, and is working a complete 
revolution in their conception of crime and punishment. 
It has become very plain, for one thing, that the criminal 
is very much like the rest of his fellows, with practically 
the same inclinations and instincts as all normal persons, 
but who yet, from one cause and another, has allowed some 
of these instincts and impulses to develop in an exagger- 
ated degree. ' In almost all persons there are tendencies 
and impulses which, if nourished by environment and un- 
restrained by society, will make criminals of the best of 
men. And it has also become plain that society is im- 
plicated in the crime of every criminal, and the existence 
of a criminal class is an indictment, not of that class 
specially, but of society at large. Thus " Every time a 
man enters the dock society enters with him, as particeps 
criminis'' (Brierley, "Religion and Experience," p. 83). 
And thus there is " a pregnant truth in the saying that 
every society has just the kind and number of criminals 
that it deserves" (G. Stanley Hall, "Adolescence," Vol. 

I, p. 341)- 

In the light of this new Christian and scientific spirit 

which is beginning to pervade society, men are beginning 
to take up a different attitude toward the wrong-doer 
and criminal. They are coming to see that human nature 
in its essence is a pretty constant quality, and the differ- 
ences in men are due rather to accidental causes than to 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAxN SOCIETY 369 

inherent qualities. " Human nature in its worst criminal 
forms is simply good stuff badly handled" (Brierley, 
ibtd., p. 79). Men are coming to believe that the making 
of criminals is wholly needless and the reformation of 
crmimals is not impossible. These two things we now 
see go together, and each implies the other. This new 
spirit may be expressed in a few propositions somewhat 
as follows: The purpose of all punishment is the pro- 
tection of society and the reformation of the wrong-doer 
Reformation is possible, and wisdom and love can work 
wonders. The society that is under obligation to punish 
and restrain the criminal is under obligation to remove 
the causes that make the criminal. Crime has causes 
and crime may be prevented by the cure of its causes. 

It must be confessed with sadness that this Christian 
conception of crime and punishment has made its way 
very slowly in the minds of men, and has come very 
late into social action. But be its progress slow or rapid 
this Christian conception is making its way in the minds 
of men, and is working a complete revolution in their 
social methods and their criminal systems. This concep- 
tion. It may be said, ^' logically involves the upheaval and 
subversion of the entire structure of criminal law as it has 
stood from time immemorial. . . All the penal codes with 
their elaborate system of graduated penalties . . . this new 
method of procedure sweeps away as utter rubbish • it 
repudiates as false and indefensible the very foundations 
on which all criminal laws have been built ; it substitutes 
a new corner-stone, that of protection of the public and 
reformation of the criminal, in place of vindictive retri- 
bution and expiation through punitive suffering; and 
upon the new foundation it would erect a radically new 
superstructure of criminal law. It logically reverses the 
attitude of the State toward the criminal ; formerly the 
State presented itself to the criminal as an avenging fury 



370 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

seizing him only to inflict suffering upon him ; and when it 
had wreaked its vengeance, casting him out with threat- 
enings for the future; the new system represents the 
State to the criminal as a kindly parental power, seeking 
to uplift and rehabilitate him, aiming to fit him for res- 
toration to freedom, and finally to send him forth with a 
helping hand." Thus the revolution in criminal law 
implied in this new conception of things is no less mo- 
mentous " than the change wrought in astronomy by the 
Copernican system, which stopped the sun and stars in 
their absurd circuit about the stationary earth and set the 
world in motion" (Eugene Smith, in "Boies Memorial 
Volume"). Punishment, it is now seen, that is not 
reformatory, is mischievous to society and diabolical in 
principle. Penalty that is reformatory is Christian in 
spirit and beneficent in results. 

And this conception necessarily implies a complete 
redistribution of blame for the criminal, and a new line of 
approach toward him. " It was the old view that crime 
is a constant factor in society, resulting from natural 
depravity or from persistent personal causes. It is 
the new view that political, economic, and social institu- 
tions, and especially the prevailing method of administer- 
ing justice and the penal system, have much to do with 
the amount and kind of crime" (Edward T. Devine, in 
" Commons," April 20, 1907). It was the old view that 
we should try to suppress crime and vice ; it is the new 
view that we should release virtues. It was the old view 
that the depraved man is the natural man ; that the causes 
of crime are wholly beyond the reach of man or society ; 
and little can be done either to keep men from going 
wrong or to save them when down. It is the new view 
that the depraved man is not the natural man, that crime 
has causes which are almost wholly within the control of 
society, and that the criminal is yet a man who, under 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 371 

wise and Christian treatment, may be cured of his lapse 
and restored to his place. 

Thus, as the State becomes Christian, it will put forth 
a steady effort to change the conditions of life and to 
remove the young from all hurtful and demoralizing in- 
fluences. It will administer justice, not alone to save 
those who have gone wrong, but it will also labor to save 
them from going wrong at all. Thus more and more the 
resources and authority of the State will be used in 
creating conditions that promote virtue and make for 
uprightness. As the State becomes more Christian it will 
see more clearly its relation to the family and the church 
and It will co-operate with these more fully and sympa- 
thetically, that thus better sentiments may be created in 
society and higher standards set up in the State. Along 
with this there will be a steady effort to effect the refor- 
mation of the wrong-doer and to restore him to his nor- 
mal place in society. To this end the State will more and 
more substitute reformatories for prisons, indeterminate 
tor fixed sentences, probation and suspended sentence 
for imprisonment for first offenses, and more than all 
juvenile courts for pohce courts and penitentiaries The 
time IS coming when less and less attention will be given 
to the building of jails, and more and more study will be 
given to the prevention of crime. The time is coming 
when the presence of penitentiaries in a State will be a 
confession to the world that society is unchristian in its 
spirit and unwise in its methods of dealing with men. 
i he State that is becoming Christian will seek to admin- 
ister justice with a saving purpose, and with a constant 
ettort to prevent crime, rather than to punish it. 

III. The Continuous and Collective Determination to 
Maintain Justice Throughout Society. At first sight this 
aim of the State seems commonplace enough, and one is 
likely to be met with the remark that this has been the 



2^2 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

aim of every State from the first. In a sense this is true, 
and no one acquainted with history will care to mmimize 
this characteristic of society. But the more carefully one 
observes the action of political States the more evident 
it becomes that justice is both imperfectly understood and 
applied. Justice, it may be said, is like the kingdom of 
God, which, while it is always here, is yet always to come. 
Two things as to this question may be kept in mmd : 

For one thing, the political machinery of the State, 
from time immemorial, has been in the hands of a political 
aristocracy, and legislation has been largely under the 
direction of a special class. It would be strange, there- 
fore, if political action and legislation were not more 
or less colored by the customs and prepossessions of the 
controlling elements in the State. For another thing, po- 
litical action is always conditioned by circumstances, and 
justice is hence an approximation. It is needless to say 
that as conditions change men's conceptions of justice 
also change. And thus what passes for justice m one 
generation may be denounced as injustice m a succeeding 
age The State that is becoming Christian, however, is 
marked by a collective and continuous determination to 
establish justice throughout society, and that a type of 
justice which shall keep pace with the growth of man s 

moral life. 

. The moral imperative is as wide-reaching as life, and 
the law of justice is as binding upon societies as upon 
individuals. There is a just and Christian manner of life 
for the person, and there is a just and Christian consti- 
tution for society; and the law of justice is as much 
the life of the one as of the other. We pronounce a man 
unjust when he disregards the rights of others and makes 
his own wishes supreme ; he is unjust when he uses others 
as means to his own ends ; he is unjust when he seeks to 
receive goods and services from men without rendering 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 373 

any fair and equitable return. In the same way we pro- 
nounce a society unjust when any number of persons 
are without true inheritance in Hfe; "it is unjust when 
large classes in it are so enslaved by others as to be 
unable to develop their own lives; it is unjust, for in- 
stance, when there is any class in it so poor or so hard 
worked or so dependent upon others, as to be unable to 
cultivate their faculties and make progress toward the 
perfection of their own nature ; it is unjust when the idle 
are protected and set in power, and the laborious are 
crushed down and degraded" (Mackenzie, "Manual of 
Ethics," Bk. Ill, chap. ii). 

Making some appHcations of this principle of justice, 
we must pronounce a man unjust when either by him- 
self or in combination with others, he seeks and secures 
control of any natural product and exploits it for his own 
advantage; he is unjust when he employs either the force 
of club, or skill of intellect, or power of money, to prevent 
free industrial action and to stifle fair competition; he is 
unjust when he uses short weights and misbrands goods, 
and when he picks men's pockets on the streets, or by 
means of a rebate; he is unjust when he adulterates 
goods and bulls the market no less than when he uses a 
false bottom in his peck measure and corners the market 
to fill his own pocket. In like manner a society is unjust 
when a disproportionate share of the goods of life falls 
into the hands of any special class; it is unjust when, 
according to the census of 1900 in America, the average 
per capita production is from twelve to fourteen dollars 
a day, while the average wage is one dollar and thirty- 
eight cents ; it is unjust when a limited number of men 
by any means whatever, within or without the law, are 
permitted to gain possession of the land, hold all' the 
strategic points of trade, and compel the people to pay 
them monopoly prices; it is radically unjust when any 



374 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

class in society is handicapped from birth and any num- 
ber are without a fair access to the common heritage. 

In the State that is becoming Christian, the pursuit of 
justice is a primary duty that claims more and ever more 
attention. Toward this end there are many things that 
men can do through the State in behalf of justice. For 
one thing, it can provide by its laws and regulations that 
men shall live in society on the human and not on the 
jungle plane. The time has been when men interpreted 
the process of life as a struggle for existence in which 
the fittest survived ; and by the fittest they usually meant 
the strongest, the most aggressive, those best fitted to claim 
and keep the lion's share. In certain lines of action the 
State has recognized its obligation to protect the weak 
and conscientious against the strong and immoral, but this 
principle must be applied all along the line of man's social 
and industrial life. Again, the State can guarantee ful- 
ness of opportunity to all its citizens, and can provide 
the conditions of a fair and human life in society. The 
time may never come — at least there is little prospect of 
its near approach — when all men are equally endowed 
with mental and moral power. But the time is forever 
here when all men, be they weak or strong, are entitled in 
justice to ample opportunity in life, with fair access to 
the inheritance of society. 

For another thing, the State can provide that gains 
received and privileges enjoyed shall bear some proportion 
to service rendered and duties fulfilled. In every nation 
to-day there is wealth enough to give every person a fair 
material basis of life; and yet in every nation there are 
many who are in abject poverty, while others struggle 
hard to keep the wolf from the door. And all the time in 
these lands a few are living in luxury, hardly able to know 
how to spend their superfluous incomes. This, in itself, 
is significant enough, but more significant is the other 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 375 

fact that the proportion of wealth falHng to the various 
parties holds little or no relation to the real toil expended 
and service rendered. No one, probably not even the 
most reactionary individualist, is willing to maintain that 
these incomes are justly apportioned, and that no one 
receives more than he has really earned, while many 
receive less. The time may not come very soon when 
all these things shall be adjusted according to exact 
equity, and men must not expect the social millennium to- 
morrow. But none the less the State that would be 
Christian must set this aim before itself, and must make 
progress in this direction. 

In the State that is becoming Christian there will be a 
continuous and collective determination to establish justice 
throughout society in the industrial as well as in the 
political sphere. In fact, this search for justice is the 
peculiar function of the State, and the State that is less 
than just is false to its first principle. Besides, the State 
is the only agency through which all the people can join 
in this search after justice among men. In saying this 
we do not mean that justice is to be the only object of the 
State, but we must insist that it is the primary object. No 
society can be even remotely Christian that is not approxi- 
mately just. It is vain to talk of a Christian civilization 
or to hope for social peace without justice all along the 
line. There is a deep significance in the story of Melchise- 
dek, the priest of God and the king of Salem. This man, 
whose name signifies the king of righteousness, dwelt in a 
city called Salem, or Peace. The discontent of men can 
be allayed and social peace can be ensured by nothing less 
than justice. Men may seek to appease the poor and 
help the disinherited by charities and benefactions, but 
no permanent solution of any problem can be found in 
this way, and society cannot advance an inch nearer its 
goal. " What may be called the great bluff of our times 



37^ THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

is the effort to put gratuities and benefactions in the 
place of justice. There is no donation, however gaudy, 
that can fulfil the place of justice " (Brooks, " The Social 
Unrest," p. 203). There must be something more than 
justice, as we shall see, to make a Christian State, but 
the State can never be Christian with anything less than 
justice all along the line. 

IV. The Steady and Collective Effort to Realize the 
Spirit of Brotherhood and Love in All the Relations of 
Society. As we have seen, the Christian spirit has created 
the finest type of personal character; it has created also 
the Christian family and the Christian church ; and all of 
these achievements are of great worth and meaning. 
The Spirit of Christ and the law of love, it is admitted, 
are the spirit and law for the person, the family, and the 
church; in these relations we expect men to be loving 
and self-sacrificing ; we expect them to bear one another's 
burdens. Brotherhood and equality, love and self-sacrifice 
we have accepted as the Christian principles for homes 
and for prayer meetings ; and by the application of these 
principles these institutions have become approximately 
Christian. ' 

But the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is the 
law for men in all relations and realms of life. This law, 
by the very nature of the case, applies everywhere, or it 
applies nowhere. This law is as real and as obligatory in 
the State as in the Church. The man who believes in 
God believes him all along the line of life. This law of 
God requires men to love one another in halls of legisla- 
tion as well as in family circles ; it asks them to bear one 
another's burdens in corporations as well as in prayer 
meetings; it calls upon them to take thought for others 
and to seek their welfare in and through the political 
State as well as in and through the family circle and the 
Christian church. 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 2i77 

I know, of course, that many men will question all this, 
and will write one down as an impracticable visionary. 
In some other world it is said, where a different order 
prevails, and where men live in different conditions, it 
may be possible to practise this law and principle. In 
some far-away millennium, when the selfish tempers of 
men have been toned down, it is conceded all men may 
live by the law of Christ, and a brotherly, social order 
may be possible. Now, in the face of all these question- 
ings and denials, the Christian must confess his faith in 
Christ, and must dare to honor his law ; he must declare 
that the State, equally with the family and the Church, 
must honor the law of Christ, and must fulfil that law in 
all its policies and practices. The time has come for the 
State to confess its faith in the law of love and the 
principle of brotherhood, and then to set about the task 
of their practical realization. In fine, the State also must 
become Christian. 

Thus far in the thought of men and the progress of 
society, men and societies have been measured by their 
fulfilment of the law of justice. But the time is coming, 
nay, it is even now here, when men and societies are to 
be measured by their fulfilment of the law of love. It is 
not enough for a man and for a society to be simply just ; 
this is no mean attainment, and must not be minimized; 
but they must be loving also if they would fulfil the law of 
Christ and stand justified before God. The man who 
would fulfil the law of Christ and be a citizen of the 
kingdom of God must therefore seek to adjust the rela- 
tions of men in harmony with the law of love ; and he 
must labor to build up in the earth a society that shall be 
the incarnation of love, and whose constitution shall be 
the organized fulfilment of the mind of Christ. 

In the State that is becoming Christian, this law of love 
and this principle of brotherhood will find ever wider 



2^8 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

and fuller realization. As society becomes more Chris- 
tian, men will see more and more clearly that the State 
is one great family, and in this family men are to live as 
brothers ; they will see that in this larger family, as in 
the smaller, each is for all, and all are for each. And in 
this family each is to find his life in and through the 
life of all; and in this larger family the statutes and 
arrangements will be but the political application of the 
law of love and the principle of brotherhood. In this 
social fam.ily the fellowship of men will be organized on 
the basis of service and not exploitation, and an effort will 
be made to give every person and class their fair share 
of the common inheritance. In this family the weak are 
not compelled to work the longest hours and to take the 
smallest wage because they are weak and are unable to 
organize themselves into trade unions. In this family the 
older and stronger do not seize the choicest bits of food 
and call it profit, nor do they crowd the sickly members 
out of the sunshine on the plea of demand and supply. 
In short, the State that is becoming Christian is beginning 
to regard itself as one great family in which each mem- 
ber has a place and a worth, and where fellowship is 
organized on the basis of the brotherhood of man and 
the solidarity of interests.^ 

In view of this, one of two things men must do : They 
must either renounce the Christian ideal and repudiate the 
Christian law ; or they must begin to practise their faith 
in the Christian ideal and confess their loyalty to the law 
of love in the life and order of society as well as in the 
family circle and the prayer meeting. The fact is, the 
spirit of brotherly love will never have its perfect work 
and become a potent thing in the world till it becomes 

1 In this chapter, and especially in this section, I have received many valuable 
suggestions from an address by my comrade. Prof. Walter Rauschenbusch, as given 
in the " Proceedings of the Religious Education Society" for 1907. 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 379 

incarnate in these larger relations of life. The faith that 
cannot dominate and transform all life can never become 
the final faith of the world. The love that can fill all life 
and transform all society is the love that will move the 
world and command the future. The steady and collect- 
ive effort to realize the spirit of brotherly love in all 
the relations of society is one of the great tasks before 
the modern world. 

V. The Collective and Unchanging Will to Secure for 
Every Person the Conditions of a Full, Human, Moral 
Life. In any complete view of man there are four factors 
that must be taken into account — heredity, environment, 
individual will, and the grace of God. At different times 
and by different men the emphasis has been thrown now 
upon one and now upon another of these factors. In 
fact, there has been an attempt upon the part of some to 
explain life in terms of one factor and to minimize all the 
others. Thus, among theologians, there has been a disposi- 
tion to explain everything in terms of personal will and 
the grace of God; these, it is said, are the determining 
factors in man's- life, and the others signify little. Among 
sociologists there is a tendency to explain life in terms of 
environment alone ; man is the product of his environment, 
we are told, and we will have better men when they have 
better conditions. But all this is a mistake, and it leads 
to tragic results. It means a narrow and one-sided view 
of man, and it leads to one-sided and narrow effort in 
man's uplifting. As a matter of fact, all of these factors 
are essential, and it is unwise to exalt one at the expense 
of the others. Where all are vital all must be taken into 
account. Without in any sense minimizing or ignoring 
these other three factors, we here notice the influence of 
environment upon man's life, and then consider the action 
of the State with reference to this factor. It is not the 
only factor in life, but it is second to none in importance. 



380 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

That this factor of environment — using the term in the 
large sense to connote the whole congeries of social con- 
ditions — is a determining factor in the lives of men is 
becoming very plain. Thus it is an accepted article of 
scientific and Christian faith that all mankind have 
descended from a common ancestor. Yet, in the race, as 
we find it, there are all kinds and conditions of men, of 
different colors and characteristics, with different mental 
and moral powers, with capacities and talents that range 
through the scale from zero to infinity. Not only so, but 
in every society in the world there are all kinds and con- 
ditions of people, of different capacities and powers, with 
some living in luxury and others living in poverty, with a 
few men standing on the heights of life, but the great 
majority still creeping in the valleys, with some enjoying 
a rich heritage of achievement and others little else than 
social wastrels. 

There are two questions which go deep into the prob- 
lem before us, and these questions society must seriously 
consider in the days to come ; when these are answered the 
whole aspect of the problem is changed. How far are 
the diflferences observed among men due to innate and 
natural differences in the quality of life itself? How 
far are these differences caused by outward conditions 
and untoward circumstances? These questions we can- 
not discuss in detail, but one or two things may be noted 

here. 

According to the Christian conception, mankind are 
all partakers of one nature. It lies withi^ the purpose of 
God that every child born into the world shall have a 
fair chance for the best things in life. The time has gone 
by when men can believe that there are various grades 
of people, with whole classes doomed to slavery, and other 
peoples made for headship and ease. The time has gone 
by when men can believe that the differences seen in every 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 381 

society are here by the decree of God. This is not all, 
but according to the modern sociological view of man the 
factor called environment is a kind of mold into which 
the plastic life is poured, there to be shaped and de- 
termined. According to the teachings of sociology hu- 
man nature is a pretty constant quality, and in itself and 
of itself possesses no such differences as are found among 
men. This means, on the one side, that the factor of 
environment is chiefly responsible for the marked and dis- 
tressful differences that we find among men in mental and 
moral capacity, as well as the obvious and ominous num- 
ber of dependent and defective members of society. This 
means, on the other side, that if this factor of environ- 
ment were fully understood and consciously directed, it 
might be possible to eliminate from society these worse 
phenomena and to narrow the differences among men. 

In view of all this the State that is becoming Christian 
has a very definite duty to fulfil. It must hold its re- 
sources in pledge for all its members, and must provide 
that the help shall be greatest where the need is sorest. 
It must use its wisdom and authority in changing condi- 
tions that are hurtful and hindering, and in creating 
conditions that shall be helpful and uplifting. It must 
declare that no soul shall be allowed to grow up in evil 
and defiling surroundings, and it must guarantee to every 
person the conditions for a full, human, moral, and 
worthy life. The State has an interest in every one of 
its members, and no life is too insignificant to lie beyond 
its concern. 

In the fulfilment of this aim there are many things 
that the State can do and must do if it would be approxi- 
mately Christian. It will seek to remove all conditions 
that make for human weakness, and will exert its author- 
ity to provide those that make for human well-being. It 
will wage an unceasing warfare against all conditions 



382 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

that make it easy for childhood to lose its bloom of 
innocence and hard for it to grow up pure and strong. 
It will put forth a steady effort to build a wall of protec- 
tion around girlhood and boyhood, and to shield child- 
hood from needless toil and hardship. It will exercise 
its sovereignty in removing the handicaps and hindrances 
that are upon men, and will show its wisdom in keeping 
the door of opportunity open before every soul within its 
jurisdiction. If the conditions are unsanitary the State 
will organize a board of health, and will endeavor to make 
them sanitary. If there are unfit tenements that poison 
life and breed disease, the State will condemn them and 
will order the very ground to be disinfected. If the 
State finds that children are growing up in evil surround- 
ings and without fit parentage, it will assume the function 
of a guardian, and will either compel the natural parents 
to provide better conditions, or it will annul the bond of 
parenthood and provide new homes for its orphans. If it 
finds that children have no childhood and no playgrounds, 
it will tear down factories to provide playgrounds, and 
will consider this money well spent. If it finds that chil- 
dren are growing up in vicious ways it will establish 
juvenile courts and probation officers, and will hold its 
resources in pledge for the redemption of the young. If 
it finds that any set of men are making merchandise of 
girlhood, it will hurl the thunderbolts of its wrath, and 
will end this diabolism. In fine, the State will exercise 
its authority in providing the necessary moral conditions 
of a good life. 

Again, in every society, there are many persons who 
begin the struggle of life at a disadvantage from other 
causes. Through the faults or the misfortunes of their 
parents they begin life without any real foothold or 
fair opportunity. They come into the world to find all its 
resources claimed in perpetuity by others, and thus they 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 383 

begin life under conditions which utterly disbar them 
from any fair chance in life. They are early forced into 
the mine or the factory to work, and thus, growing up 
without an education, they are unable to rise out of their 
condition. Now, however it may have been in the past, 
the time is going by when the State that is gaining the 
} Spirit of Christ will be wilHng that any soul should 
grow up handicapped and unprivileged in this way. And 
so it must put forth a continuous and collective effort to 
provide conditions for every soul which make possible a 
worthy human life. 

This means that the State that is becoming Christian 
must make a collective effort to give all its citizens ad- 
vantageous terms for the development of their lives. If 
great estates are increasing from generation to generation 
to the disadvantage of the people, the State will exert its 
authority and will tax and limit inheritances. If the nat- 
ural resources of the earth are falling into a few hands 
and are being exploited to the disadvantage of the many, 
the State will vindicate the principle of eminent domain, 
and will change this order of things. If many of the 
people are unable to provide the means of a worthy edu- 
cation the State will establish a public-school system 
whereby every child may have a fair opportunity to de- 
velop its powers. If there is danger lest any of the people 
be denied access to knowledge and literature, the State 
will build and maintain libraries and will consider such 
expenditures as most wise. If any of the children are 
forced into mines and factories to labor, the State will 
wisely forbid such labor, and will seek to make it unneces- 
sary for children thus to toil. If there is a large class of 
unemployed workers, the State will not only seek to pro- 
vide work for them, but it will inquire into the causes of 
such unemployment, and will seek to remove these causes. 
If there is social deterioration at any point owing to un- 



384 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

certain employment, low wages, and excessive toil, the 
State will consider these things and will not rest till it 
has found a remedy. 

One is well aware of the objection brought by many 
who call themselves practical men of business. These 
things are good enough for preaching, but they will 
not work in this matter-of-fact world. Besides all this, 
the laws of trade are inevitable and inflexible; in order 
to maintain the present industrial prosperity and produce 
cheap goods, it is necessary that some children should labor 
in coal breakers and in factories ; we may deplore the sad 
results, but these things cannot be avoided; we cannot 
stop the wheels of industry for the sake of a few chil- 
dren ; and what is more, we cannot meddle with the laws 
of trade without producing a crisis, thus doing more 
harm than good. Such reactionary and unhuman pleas 
have been heard from the beginning at every forward step. 
But humanity has persisted, thanks to the brave faith of 
the people, and has ended one abuse after another; and 
humanity will persist in the future and will never rest 
till it has changed the whole order of things and has 
made it possible for every child to have a fair chance. 
Everything depends upon the point of view. The policy 
of the State in the last analysis turns upon the one ques- 
tion whether man is means or whether he is end. 

Last of all, the State will seek to provide " fit oppor- 
tunity in infinite variety" for all its members. It is 
needless to discuss the fact— so patent to all— that men 
differ greatly in endowments and aptitudes, and these 
differences are as inevitable as they are necessary. Since 
this is so, each man ought to respect his individuality and 
live his own life; and society should provide each man 
free scope for his talents and encourage him to make the 
most of his aptitude. 

But, as a matter of fact, we find that there are— and 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 385 

there always have been — influences at work which seek 
to run men into the same mold and reduce them to a 
dead uniformity. The modern factory turns out watches 
by the thousands every year, but it is enabled to do this 
by making them all exactly alike. If human society were 
an aggregation of Waterbury watches, it might be well 
enough to subject them all to the same discipline and 
expect of them all the same results ; but since society is a 
union of human beings, each with his own aptitudes and 
capacities, the individuality of each must be recognized 
and fit opportunty must be provided. It will be a great 
day for the progress of man when society honors indi- 
viduality and seeks both to multiply fit opportunity and 
to increase its variety (" Charities and the Commons," 
April 2, 1908). This means that each life is entitled to 
fair consideration, and should have opportunity to make 
the most of itself. The largest service which society can 
render to any life consists in providing it Vv^ith fit oppor- 
tunity to grow and unfold to the highest degree. 

The world only grows better, even in the moderate 
degree in which it does grow better, John Morley reminds 
us, because people wish that it should and take the right 
steps to make it better. The progress of society will be 
accelerated, we may add, as men appreciate the importance 
of environment and set about the creation of conditions 
that are helpful to man. What then is the conclusion of 
this whole matter? The citizens of the State that would 
become Christian must study this question of environ- 
ment, and must know what are the things that help or 
hinder the human being. Then these citizens, in and 
through the State, must resolutely set about the creation 
of social conditions which shall promote human develop- 
ment and shall make possible for every person a full and 
worthy life. " The watchful eye of the State must be 
directed for protection of all classes of persons who are 
z 



386 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

likely to lose ground by their own weakness, and to be 
permanently thrown out of the ways of advancement by 
the simple force of events " (Bascom, " Sociology," p. 45)- 
And the resources of the State must be held in pledge for 
all its members, and the authority of the State must be 
employed in creating conditions that shall make for hu- 
man progress and development. In fine, the State that is 
becoming Christian will not be satisfied that there shall 
be any outcast and unprivileged souls doomed from birth 
tof poverty and sin, and debarred by conditions beyond 
their control from all the best things in life ; and it will 
not rest till it has created conditions which make possible 
for every one of its members a full and worthy human 

and moral life. 

This effort on the part of society to provide for every 
soul the material basis and necessary conditions of a 
human and worthy life is the negative aspect of a great 
social duty. It now remains for us to consider the posi- 
tive aspect of this duty, which consists in the effort of 
society to evoke the possibilities of each life, to nourish 
it into fulness and maturity, and both to give it access to 
the best things in life and to train it in the appreciation 
and use of these best things. 

VI. A Genuine Interest in All, with a Steady Effort to 
Give Each Person a Fair Inheritance in Society. In a 
previous chapter we have seen that in every society to- 
day there is a large class of the disinherited, who begin 
life under conditions which are a serious handicap, and 
which preclude them from any real chance therein. But 
since every human being possesses an infinite worth and 
has some meaning in the total value of society; and 
since social progress is the march of all together, it fol- 
lows that the State should seek to bring up the laggards 
in the march and to give every person a fair inheritance 
in society. 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 387 

In the pursuit of this aim there are three things which 
men must steadily keep before themselves. First, there is 
no reason in the will of God and the nature of man why 
there should be all this poverty and waste with a large 
disinherited class without any true inheritance in life. 
Secondly, a society which is approximately Christian in 
spirit and method will show a vital interest in every one 
of its members, and will use its resources in behalf of his 
uplifting. And thirdly, this is a social task, and must be 
achieved by social action, and not by individual action 
alone. 

I. There is no reason in the will of God and the nature 
of things for all the waste of modern society and for the 
presence of a large disinherited class. It lies within the 
purpose of God that every life should grow up tall and 
straight, and should be clean and pure. That this is so 
is made very evident in the Christian Scriptures, wherein 
we have a revelation of God's character and purpose. 
Thus, the lawgiver of old dreamed of a time when there 
should be no poor in the land (Deut. 15 : 4), and to the 
best of his ability he sought to hasten on that day. The 
prophet foresaw the time when all men should dwell in 
peace, each under his own vine and fig tree (Micah 4: 4), 
when the land should produce in abundance and there 
would be enough for all (Isa. 32 : 16-20). The Son of 
man declares that it is not the will of the Father who 
is in heaven that one of his little ones should perish, and 
he utters a heavy woe upon those who put a stumbling- 
block before the little child (Matt. 18 : 6-T4). The seer 
of Patmos cherished the vision of a city in which there are 
no disinherited, but where all have access to the tree of 
Hfe (Rev. 21 : 22). The Father's bounties are for all 
his children and, as there is plenty and to spare in the 
Father's house, there is every reason why every soul 
should have access to these bounties, and should have a 



388 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

fair inheritance in life. That a human soul made for 
knowledge and power should die ignorant and neglected 
we must call a tragedy, whether it happen twenty times 
in a minute, as some maintain, or only once in a gener- 
ation. 

2. The will of God concerning his human children 
defines the policy of the State in its social action. In the 
State that is becoming Christian, an unceasing effort is. 
made to widen the door of opportunity and to hold the 
resources of society in pledge for all its members. Several 
things may be mentioned briefly as entering into this part 
of our programme. 

First, the State will seek to provide for every person 
the opportunity of an education, and thus to give him a 
fair access to the best things of Hfe with a measurable 
development of his powers. One or two things may be 
noted here : Any real education means the development 
and unfolding of the native capacities of the soul ; to 
prepare the person to make the most of himself for him- 
self and for society. Education is a vital process, and 
consists in the development of each life in its highest 
capacities. This, in whole or in part, is recognized 
by the best modern State as the system of general 
education testifies. But this aim, none the less, needs 
to be newly conceived that the whole system may 
be enlarged to meet the ever-enlarging conception of 
human life. '' There can be no equality and no justice, 
not to speak of equity, so long as society is composed of 
members, equally endowed by nature, a few of whom only 
possess the social heritage of truth and ideas of all past 
ages, while the great mass are shut out from all the light 
that human achievement has shed upon the world. The 
equalization of opportunity means the equalization of edu- 
cation, and not until this is attained is there any virtue or 
hope in schemes for the equalization of the material 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 389 

resources of society " (Ward, '' Applied Sociology," p. 

281). 

Again, the total resources of the State — the material 
basis of every life — are to be held in trust for the benefit 
of all, and no one class must be allowed to obtain an 
undue and disproportionate share of the common heri- 
tage. No man and no class of men can be allowed to 
preempt in perpetuity the strategic points of advantage 
and thus to compel all their fellows to pay them tribute. 
The authority of the State, which represents the highest 
will of the people, must be kept free from class control, 
and must steadily exert itself in behalf of social justice 
and human progress. It is intolerable to the Christian 
spirit that the resources of society should be manipulated 
by the few to the disadvantage of the many. It is con- 
trary to the Christian conception of things that a few 
men shall preempt all the choice gifts of God, while the 
great majority must pay them tribute for the mere privi- 
lege of living and be content. It is part and parcel of the 
Christian conception that the highest goods of life are for 
all men, and to labor that all men may be raised up into 
the possession and appreciation of these goods. And so 
it is part and parcel of this conception that the strength 
and wisdom of all shall be held in pledge for the uplift 
and blessing of all ; that in the strength and blessing of all 
each may find his own life and portion. 

In the prosecution of this task it may not be desirable, 
as it may not be possible, for the State to inaugurate a 
system of communal ownership of land or to divide up 
the common inheritance in every new generation. It may 
be desirable and wise, however, for the modern states- 
man to consider the great principles that underlay the 
Mosaic legislation with reference to this whole question of 
social opportunity. In that legislation an effort was made 
by means of the jubilee provision, to erect a bar to the 



390 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

monopoly of land and to prevent the rise of a permanently 
landless class without any true inheritance in the nation. 
The legislator recognized certain facts that are known 
to all; that in every society there are some persons who, 
from one cause or another, find it difficult to maintain 
their footing; he recognized the other fact that in every 
society there are some men who are ready to take advan- 
tage of their brothers' weakness and inefficiency, and use 
these as a means to their own ends. For many years the 
rich man might join house to house and lay field to field 
till there was no place where the poor man might rest ; for 
many years the poor man might be kept out of his ances- 
tral estate, but his children could not be hopelessly handi- 
capped. For, after a time, this process of land monopoly 
must cease and the lands revert to their original owners. 
The whole tendency and aim of this jubilee system was to 
make land monopoly impossible and to prevent the rise of 
a permanent land-holding class that should control all the 
strategic points. And the whole tendency and aim of 
this system, on the other side, was to renew in every 
generation the conditions of a moral life and to declare 
that one generation should not be put out of the race by 
the action of a previous one. This legislation sought to 
broaden the way of success for all, to put a limit to the 
greed and cruelty of men, to give every one a fair start 
in life with a just inheritance in society (Lev. 25 : 10-13 ; 
also Munger, "Freedom of Faith," "Land Tenure"). 
It is probable that no modern legislator would seri- 
ously think of applying this law in its literal provisions 
to the life of to-day ; but beyond question there are great 
underlying principles in this old legislation that must be 
considered and applied by every State that would truly 
promote the welfare of all its members. " The State 
has the difficult duty of encouraging and aiding unim- 
peded activity in every class, and at the same time re- 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 39 1 

newing its conditions in each class. The race is to be 
renewed morning, noon, and night on equal terms." 
Again, " Society is to strive for a perpetual renewal of 
opportunities and redistribution of advantages, so that 
every child shall come from the cradle to a fresh world 
with fresh incentives, not to one overworn and used up 
for him by the errors of past generations " ( Bascom, 
"Sociology," pp. 45, 252). This principle is clear and 
positive, and it will gain an increasing recognition as 
men become more just and society becomes more Chris- 
tian. 

3. And finally, the State that is becoming Christian, 
will regard this work as a social mission and not alone as 
an individual task. It may be said, in passing, that there 
are many who, while admitting these tragic phenomena, 
yet make short shrift of the whole question by saying 
that their cure is wholly an individual problem, and the 
State has consequently no duty in the premises. The 
vast majority of these people are poor and ignorant and 
sickly and helpless, we are told, because they prefer this 
condition, and will not rise out of it. The simple fact is, 
much of this poverty and helplessness is due to causes 
over which the individual has no control. The little 
child, driven by its parents to work in the mills and mines 
in foul and unhealthful conditions, is in no position to rise 
out of those conditions and become either a scholar or a 
farmer. The child born in a crowded tenement with 
weakened vitality and weighted will can never rise by 
his unaided efforts. In our modern society, from one 
cause and another, the denizen of the slums is actually 
walled in, and so is debarred from many fields of aspira- 
tion. One may preach to these people the gospel of self- 
help and personal goodness ; but the fact remains that 
much of this preaching falls short of its full results ; 
indeed, much of it is as inane in spirit as it is false in 



392 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

method. By all means let men seek to arouse in these 
people an inward hungering after the ideal and teach 
them the value of individual initiative; by all means let 
society refuse to do for these people what they only can 
do for themselves. But let us know also that the gospel 
of self-help alone can never fully avail in these lives; 
let us remember that no cruelty can be greater than to 
expect man to do that which no man can do unaided. 
The man who attributes all the poverty and crime of the 
social delinquents and defectives to their individual dis- 
credit is neither clear-sighted nor wise-hearted. 

The more carefully we study the whole life of man the 
more clearly do we see that this purpose of the State to 
give each person a fair inheritance in society is a social 
task and can never be fulfilled by individual action alone. 
This is made very clear in such writings as " The Rela- 
tion of the State to Industrial Action," by Prof. H. C. 
Adams ; " The Social Problem," by John Hobson ; " Ap- 
plied Sociology," by Prof. Lester F. Ward ; and " Soci- 
ology," by President Bascom. And in view of all the 
factors involved in this task we are forced to the con- 
clusion that all the institutions of man's life must co- 
operate to the one end. Since this is so, the State that is 
becoming intelligent and Christian will seek a wise and 
steady co-operation with the other institutions of man's 
life, the family, and the church, that all together they 
may create conditions in which noble lives shall be 
nourished and a social order insured in which every soul 
shall have a true inheritance. This aim is as novel as it is 
audacious, but this is the aim which society must seriously 
and steadily set before itself. 

Three things combine to define and emphasize this 
task. First, the Father's bounties are for all his children ; 
and there is plenty and to spare in his house. It is not 
his will that one of his little ones should come short of 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 393 

any of these bounties, but the rather abound in them all. 
Secondly, the State, in the Christian conception of it, is a 
kind of mutual aid society, wherein the resources of all are 
held in pledge for the welfare and blessing of each ; it is 
the highest function of the State to take thought for every 
child and to give him a fair inheritance. Thirdly, the 
very idea of democracy implies the Christian and fra- 
ternal type of State; for democracy is a confession of 
brotherhood ; it is based upon the worth of man, and it is 
the equal recognition of mutual obligations. These central 
truths of Christianity, these fundamental ideas of democ- 
racy, are principles of social and political action no less 
than of individual effort and church policy; and hence 
they are to determine the aims and efforts of the State 
no less than those of the church and the individual. And 
so it follows that in the democratic State that is motived 
by the spirit of Christ a collective and continuous effort 
must be made to keep the door of opportunity open before 
every man and to make it possible for each to develop his 
possibilities to the full. It must make it impossible for 
any person within its borders to grow up in ignorance and 
poverty, to be unprivileged and disinherited, to be stunted 
and deformed and destitute of the things that make for 
the highest good. In short, in a State that is becoming 
Christian and democratic, there is a genuine interest in 
all with a conscious and organized effort to bring the 
outcasts into the family circle, to give them an outlook 
into the highest life, to bring the highest goods within 
reach of the downmost soul, and to lift up this down- 
most soul into the possession and appreciation of his her- 
itage. And all this, it may be said, is not a matter of 
choice, but a plain necessity, being implied in the Chris- 
tian faith and the democratic creed. 

All these aims and objects, we may be told, are 
already recognized, in part at least, in the best legisla- 



394 '■^HE CHRISTIAN STATE 

tion and policy of the more advanced nations, such as 
Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. This, 
we readily and gladly admit, and in all that we have said, 
we have simply sought to define and apply some principles 
that are more or less recognized by the more progressive 
peoples that profess the faith of Christ and accept the 
democratic idea. But, withal, the fact remains that these 
principles are but imperfectly understood and partially 
applied. And so the need demands that these principles 
be interpreted an'ew in every generation, and thus inter- 
preted be given an ever wider and more resolute applica- 
tion. 

VII. The Steady Determination to Exalt Man and to 
Make Wealth a Means and Not an End. This is not by 
any means the common aim on the part of the State 
to-day, nor of the mass of individuals. In all the great 
nations of the past the rank and file have had no mean- 
ing or value save in their relation to kings and nobles. 
The great mass of the people were regarded as fertilizer 
around the roots of a few fine specimens of humanity; 
and when these specimen plants were produced the whole 
process was justified. In modern times we have changed 
this estimate somewhat. In the democratic State there is 
a new appraisal of man's worth, and the common man is 
beginning to have some meaning in the total sumi. Mod- 
ern society, in theory at least, has accepted the Christian 
view of man, and has declared that his life has a value. 
It has made the average man a citizen and sought to 
create within him a sovereign's consciousness. 

And yet it may be seriously questioned whether our 
modern estimate, in its practical applications, is one whit 
higher and worthier than the ancient valuation. A system 
of philosophy is at once the determiner of a people's faith 
and a definition of a people's practice. In these modern 
times there has grown up a study that calls itself the 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 395 

science of political economy; and this study, it is con- 
fessed by its exponents, is concerned with the one 
question — the production of wealth. In this science the 
money standard of value is supreme, and everything is 
rated by it. The principles of this science have invaded 
other departments of life, and as a consequence the money 
standard has held almost unlimited sway over man's social 
and political life. One does not much wonder, therefore, J 
that Carlyle should characterize this economic doctrine as 
" That Dismal Science." And one does not wonder either 
that Ruskin should flame out against this conception of 
man, and should declare that the model man of this 
dismal science was fit only to sit for the portrait of a lost 
soul. There are many passions of the human heart, the 
love of money and the desire for power, which have been 
fostered and excused by this doctrine of wealth, and as a 
result modern society has set up its gods of Mammon and 
has made the money standard supreme. Our whole 
civilization, says Felix Adler, is infiltrated with the 
money-getting idea. A brutal and soulless capitalism is 
getting control of modern production and distribution, 
and is using the machinery of government to further its 
own ends. " In so far as this capitalism is in control of 
the standards of business action, it is reducing the march 
of human progress to marking time in the lock-step of 
a chain gang." " The whole programme of our modern 
civilization turns at last on a calculation of effects upon 
the accumulation of capital ; a programme fit for a Chris- 
tian civilization would turn rather upon its effects on the 
quality of men that civilization shall produce. . . We have 
our modern way of turning moral values upside down. 
We are making men the means of making capital, 
whereas capital is only tolerable when it is simply and 
solely a means of making men. It would be infinitely to 
the advantage of men if every dollar of wealth should be 



396 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

cleaned off the earth, provided ^ye could have in its place 
industry and honesty and justice and love and faith, 
rather than to be led much further into this devil's dance 
of capitalism" (Professor Small, "The Outlook," June 
17, 1899). And this, he reminds us, is not the familiar 
rant of the professional agitator, nor the easy generaliza- 
tion of the huckster of vain sensations. Some years ago a 
noted scientist of England declared that the greatness of 
England was due beyond all other causes to the abundance 
and cheapness of her coal. If it be so, said Ruskin, then 
ashes to ashes be her epitaph, and the sooner the better. 
At a poHtical gathering some years ago a noted speaker 
declared: "No issue ever gets above the bread and 
butter issue." And the people applauded. 

In the true and Christian conception of things, man is 
the end, and all other things are means. In this true 
and Christian conception of the State also human life is 
the supreme value, and all other things are brought to 
this standard. This is so evident to the one who reads the 
New Testament that it seems needless to amplify or prove 
it. Things are here for the sake of man, and not man 
for the sake of things. A man's life consisteth not in the 
abundance of the things which he possesseth. Man does 
not live by bread alone, but by every word of the Lord 
does man live. And the same is true of the State. A 
people's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
which it possesses. A people does not live by bread 
alone, but by the things of the spirit and the word of God. 
The end of the State, said Aristotle, is not life alone, but 
good life ; whence it follows that virtue is the serious care 
of a State that truly deserves the name. Let there be 
worse cotton, said Emerson, and better men ("The 
Method of Nature"). 

In a State that is becoming Christian, man is regarded 
as the end, and all other things are valued as means to 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 397 

this end. In a society that is becoming Christian, financial 
questions, such as the tariff and railroads, revenue and 
manufacture, the protection of sheep and the extension 
of markets, will receive relatively less and less attention, 
while vital questions, such as education and child labor, 
temperance and morality, will receive relatively more and 
more. In a city that is becoming Christian, questions of 
paving and franchises, corporations and business, will^ 
more and more fall into the background, and questions of 
homes for the people, sanitary tenements, moral environ- 
ment, and spiritual welfare, will more come into the 
foreground. In a nation that is becoming Christian the 
production of material possessions will be regarded as a 
means to an end, and the production of the largest num- 
ber of healthy and moral men and women will be honored 
as its chief glory. In a society that is becoming Christian 
there is an ever truer and higher appreciation of man's 
true life, and less and less are men being concerned with 
things such as property and bank accounts. As society 
becomes more Christian the great outstanding features 
of the Holy City will appear in the societies of earth. 
And more and more men will be the ends, and wealth will 
be the means. And thus, little by little, the gold of the 
nation will be put down under foot to form the pavements 
of the city of God, and made to serve the true life of man. 
One had rather think of this earth as a shining planet in 
the divine galaxy on which God's children aspire after 
ideal ends, than to think of it as a dirt ball whose sign is 
a dollar mark and inhabited by a race of creatures whose 
only mission is to create wealth. In the last analysis the 
worth of every civilization and the value of every society 
must be measured by the man who is both its center and 

its product. 

VIII. All the aims and efforts thus far considered sum 
themselves up in one comprehensive and synthetic aim 



398 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

and effort : The political vision of the kingdom of God 
and the collective effort to realize that kingdom on the 
earth. 

Thus far in the political life of man there has been little 
vision of the great end of the State, and as a consequence 
the metapolitical element has been almost entirely want- 
ing. The great mass of the people have lived without any 
vision beyond the day, and they have sought only the 
things in plain sight. There has been no synthetic pro- 
gramme of social action which the whole people might 
follow in their search for the kingdom. For this reason 
one is not surprised to find that men have built their 
States without the inspiration of the ideal ; nor is he sur- 
prised to know that they have made little collective effort 
to realize the kingdom of God in this present world. 

It is just here that we perceive one of the most note- 
worthy characteristics of the Christian State and find 
one of the most hopeful signs of these modern times. 
There is coming to men a vision of the divine goal of 
the State ; and there is growing in them a collective desire 
to seek this goal. As a consequence they are beginning 
to feel the evils of the world as men have never felt 
them before; they are beginning to ask whether these 
evils are necessary and inevitable; they are beginning to 
search into causes ; and they are seeking for some pro- 
gramme in which they all can unite in their effort to 
promote the progress of society. They are beginning 
to realize that mankind is one family, and they are learn- 
ing to think of the State as an agency of God in the dis- 
tribution of his bounties to his children and as a medium 
through which his purpose is fulfilled in the earth. In 
fine, they are beginning to realize that the State has no 
other business in the world than to repeat in its life and 
organize in its order the spirit of Christ and the prin- 
ciples of the kingdom of God. 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 399 

The three hues of inquiry running through our study 
converge at one point and make very plain the way that 
men must now take. The State has one great end to 
seek in the world, and that is to organize and incarnate 
in the social and political life of man the righteousness, 
the peace, and the joy of the kingdom of God. This 
mission of the State may be looked at from below or 
from above, but the end is one. Looked at from be- 
low it is here to serve the life of man, to be an agency 
and means whereby the race is blessed and man comes 
to maturity. Looked at from above the State has one 
object, and that is the fulfilment of God's gracious 
purpose concerning his human children; and thus the 
end of government is to apprehend and apply the 
principles and laws of the kingdom of God, and to 
make them regnant in human society. It may be a long 
time before the State will realize this end and will or- 
ganize its life in the spirit of Christ; it miay be a long 
time before men will fully understand the axioms of 
Christ and will observe the landmarks of the kingdom 
in their social and political life. But this is the divine 
meaning of the State, and this is the purpose which 
men must resolutely set before themselves. To hasten 
on this work is the business of the Christian citizen, 
and he has no other real business here below. To seek 
the kingdom of God and its righteousness in this pres- 
'ent world and to build up in the earth the city of God, 
is the chief duty of society, and it becomes Christian in 
so far as it seeks this end. In the great words of Im- 
manuel Fichte, " Christianity is destined some day to 
become the inner organizing power of the State." In 
the no less significant words of De Laveleye we may 
say: "There is in human afFairs one order which is 
best. That order is not always the one which exists, 
but it is the order which should exist for the greatest 



400 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

good of humanity. God knows it and wills it; man's 
duty it is to discover and establish it." One thing is 
certain beyond peradventure : our social and political 
practice must either conform to our ethical philosophy 
and our religious ideals; or our ethical philosophy and 
our religious ideals will conform to our social and po- 
litical practice. That is, Christian men must either cast 
away the Christian ideal of society, or they must seek 
to realize that ideal in their political institutions. 

In saying all this, in cherishing the hope of the 
Christian State, we do not indulge in Utopian dreams 
nor expect any impossible results. We know all too 
well the difficulties that lie in the way to Utopia; we 
measure fully all the delays that must be endured. 
" We know well that there is no perfection for man in 
this life; there is only growth toward perfection. In 
personal religion we look with seasoned suspicion at 
any one who claims to be holy and perfect; yet we 
always tell men to become holy and seek perfection. We 
make it a duty to seek what is unattainable. We have 
the same paradox in the perfectibility of society. We 
shall never have a perfect society, yet we must seek it 
with faith. . . At best there is always but an approxima- 
tion to a perfect social order. The kingdom of God is 
always coming " (Rauschenbusch, '* Christianity and the 
Social Crisis," pp. 420, 421). This vision of the ideal 
and this approximation toward it is the sign that the 
State is becoming Christian. There is no one reform, we 
fully admit, which will mean the reform of society ; there 
is no one abuse which, if corrected, would insure the hap- 
piness and peace of mankind ; there is no set of laws, no 
system of government which can alone bring in the mil- 
lennium ; there is no hour in all the future of the race 
when one can say that the world is perfect and the king- 
dom of God is fully come. And yet there is a vast amount 



THE PROGRAMME OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 4OI 

of remediable wrong; there are a hundred abuses that 
can be corrected and their correction will clear the way of 
progress. The world can be made better, and we are 
to set about it in a wise and hopeful spirit. Something 
can be done, and not to do this is to convict ourselves of 
high treason against the kingdom of God. Any experi- 
ment that will improve by a hair's breadth the condition of 
a single human being is well worth trying. Any effort 
that will help a single soul in any way, is the translation 
into deed of some article of the Christian faith. The only 
men for whom Christ had no hope, and for whom the 
future holds no promise, are the dead souls who are 
satisfied with the world and do not believe in social 
progress. The one failure in life which has no com- 
pensation and no cure is the failure of the man who 
has no ideal, and does not believe in a fairer to-morrow. 
The one success in life which has no shadow and no 
equal is the success of the man who cherishes this divine 
ideal and seeks to lead his fellows toward the sun- 
rising. It may be a mistake to have an ideal that is 
too high; but it is a misfortune, yea, it is a crime to 
have no ideal at all. 



2A 



XV 

THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

THE State, in some form, is a universal phenom«non. 
Democracy, so the facts indicate, is acquiring such 
aii irresistible momentum that its world-wide extension is 
only a question of time. Christianity, its followers 
believe, is the one religion that possesses the marks 
of universality and finality. The State, we have 
reason to believe, is destined to wax rather than wane 
in its influence and importance. Democracy, as the 
best students of history agree, is a Christian product; 
and what is more significant, democracy must become 
real as Christianity becomes regnant. Is it possible 
for the State to become Christian, and for Christianity 
to become political, and for both the State and Christi- 
anity to become democratic in spirit and form? These 
questions, it may be said, are among the most inter- 
esting and vital that man can ask, and upon their right 
solution depend a hundred questions in the life of man 
and the progress of society. 

The time has come for us to gather up the threads 
of our study and to mark their relation to one another. 
In the first division we considered the nature and 
origin of the State, and noted some of its functions and 
ideals. We saw that the State grows out of the nature 
of man, that it is necessary to him, and that it has im- 
portant functions to fulfil In the economy of life. In 
the second division we considered the forms of the 
State, noting especially the rise and development of 
democracy, attempting to define in part its meaning and 
402 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 403 

to indicate some of its tasks. We found that democ- 
racy is a product of the Christian spirit, that it is a 
confession in social and poHtical relations of the great 
fact of brotherhood, and that in the fundamental truths 
of Christianity it has both its validity and its vitality. 
In the third division we are concerned with the rela- 
tion between Christianity and the State, with the special 
tasks that confront a Christian society, closing with the 
realization in the world of the Christian democracy. 
We find that in Christianity we have the ideal of a 
human society on earth, that Christianity is no less 
social than personal, and that it will not have its perfect 
work till it has created the city of God among men. 
We find also that the State has some great goal toward 
which it is moving ; that as society becomes more Chris- 
tian in spirit it becomes more democratic in form, and 
that the State needs Christianity to be its informing and 
vitalizing spirit, as Christianity needs the State to be 
one of the spheres of its manifestation and power. Thus 
we find that the three lines of study all converge at 
the one point, and this point of convergence must be 
noted. 

The State is here as a recognized fact and force in 
the life of man, and we are convinced that it has some 
human meaning and divine end. In the Christian con- 
ception we have a great ideal for man and for society, and 
in it the State plays an important part. What then is 
the relation between the Christian ideal and the political 
State? Is there any real and necessary relation between 
them, or must they ever lie in different realms? What 
are the aims which the Christian who is a citizen should 
set before himself? And what are the results which we 
may expect Christianity to achieve in the realm of man's 
social and political life? These are some of the urgent 
and practical questions of to-day, and upon their rtcrht 



^04 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

solution depend many things in man's thought and action. 
By the very nature of the case it is impossible for men 
to live permanently and harmoniously under a divided 
allegiance. They must therefore either lower their re- 
ligious ideal to the level of their political life, or they 
must raise their political life till it shall synchronize with 
their religious ideal. This means that they must either 
make the State Christian, in the best sense of the term, 
or they must abandon the Christian ideal as an im- 
practicable dream. 

I. The Political State and the Perfection of Man. There 
are two or three questions that must be answered before 
we shall be in a position to understand the nature of the 
Christian State or to define the special tasks of the 
Christian citizen. Can the State ever become Christian? 
What is the relation between the kingdom of God and the 
political State? What is impUed in the progress and per- 
fection of man ? 

I. Can the State ever become Christian? There are 
many who have maintained very positively that the 
State never can become Christian ; for Christianity, it is 
asserted, belongs to one sphere of life, while the State 
concerns itself with interests that lie in a different sphere 
Men have cherished the conception of the kingdom of 
God and they have been members of the political State ; 
but withal they have seen little real relation between the 
two; on the contrary they have regarded the one as the 
antithesis of the other. They have thought of the 
kingdom of God and the political State as exclusive 
magnitudes, and so they have construed the interests of 
the two in wholly different categories. 

Thus, in the name of what may be called the personal 
conception of the kingdom men have contended that 
Christianity has nothing to do with the political State. 
With many persons, from the first century to the 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 405 

twentieth, the ideal of the kingdom of God has connoted 
a wholly subjective and individual good. The kingdom of 
God is within you, men have said, and hence it has noth- 
ing to do with such things as political States and social 
reforms. Our citizenship is in heaven, they have declared, 
and so we have nothing to do with the politics of earth. 
They have hence narrowed their horizon to the personal 
life, and have concerned themselves very little with what 
they are pleased to call " secular politics." In this con- 
ception it is evident that the perfection of man has no 
necessary relation to the perfection of the State; in fact, 
the perfect State is an absurdity; as men become Chris- 
tian the State will pass away and be known no more 
forever. 

Again, in the name of the ecclesiastical conception of 
the kingdom of God, men have maintained that Chris- 
tianity has little to do with political matters. In this con- 
ception the idea of the kingdom of God is narrowed down 
to the dimensions of the Christian church; the bound- 
aries of the two magnitudes are made conterminous ; 
and hence the extension of the kingdom is the making 
of the church. In this conception whatever interest of 
life does not fall within the boundaries of the church lies 
outside the kingdom ; and hence the extra-ecclesiastical 
interests have little relation to the kingdom; and so it 
follows that the coming of the kingdom has no relation 
to the development of the State. All through the cen- 
turies these conceptions have appeared, now here, now 
there, sometimes clearly expressed, more often silently 
implied. Many of the early Christians, as we know, 
thought lightly of the State, and gave it no place in the 
ultimate purpose of God ; many regarded it with sus- 
picion and fear, and looked upon it as an alien realm 
with which Christ had nothing to do. The political 
State in all such views has little relation to the kingdom 



406 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

of God, and the coming of the kingdom means the un- 
making of the State. 

There are many, both within and without the church, 
who file an objection against this whole discussion of 
the Christian State, and this objection we must note. 
Every picture requires a background; thus against the 
objection brought against this conception we may behold 
the outlines of the Christian State. The Christian State, 
we are assured, is a contradiction in terms, and the build- 
ing of such a State is a forlorn hope. The State is made 
up of all classes and conditions of men, and for this 
reason it must forever fall short of the perfection of the 
kingdom. The kingdom means perfection, and the State 
is composed of people at all stages of moral worth and 
social power. Beyond all this the kingdom of God is 
something that comes to men, and not something that 
can be built by men ; something that persuades, not any- 
thing that forces ; and though men may do something to 
prepare for the kingdom, they yet cannot make the king- 
dom. For these and many other reasons, it is contended, 
the Christianization of the State is a contradiction in 
terms, and we should cease all such misleading discus- 
sions. Just so far as the State becomes Christian it 
ceases to be political. Just so far as the State remains 
political it is not Christian. Respecting this, one or two 
things may be noted. 

In many of these objections to the idea of the Chris- 
tian State, there lurks a fallacy which shows a total mis- 
apprehension of Christianity; and some of the objections, 
pious as they may sound, are little other than transparent 
Pharisaism. There are Christian men in the world, one 
likes to believe; but there are no perfect men, as far 
as one can observe. In men, in the best of men, there 
are always some things to be cast off and some advances 
to be made. The Christian man is one who is being 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIxVN STATE 407 

saved, and he is to be judged not so much by what he 
now is as by what he is coming to be. Again, there are 
Christian churches in the world one hkes to beheve, but 
there is no church, so far as man can discover, which is 
wholly Christian. If by a Christian church we mean a 
company of perfect people with a perfect organization, 
then no such church exists or has ever existed. In the 
churches — in every church known to man — there are 
members at all stages of immaturity and growth, and the 
church that claims to be wholly perfect and mature is 
guilty of an impudence that would shock a Pharisee. 
The Christian church is a body that is becoming Chris- 
tian, and it is to be judged, not so much by what it is as 
by what it is coming to be. The same test may be ap- 
plied to the State, and with precisely the same results. 
There is no State that is fully Christian except in the 
perfervid imagination of some dreamer, and the Chris- 
tian State, so far as we can prophesy, is still far in the 
future. But, if it is fair to speak of Christian man and 
the Christian church, it is no less fair to speak of the 
Christian State, and for precisely the same reasons. 
The Christian State is a State that is becoming Christian, 
and it is to be judged, not so much by what it is as 
by what it is coming to be. 

In much of the current discussion concerning Chris- 
tianity and its expressions there lurks a subtle fallacy 
that vitiates many of our arguments and conclusions. 
There are some things that ought to be self-evident after 
all these centuries of Christian teaching and practice. For 
one thing, we have learned that the mere profession of 
the Christian faith does not by any means make one a 
Christian. For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, 
says Paul, but the only circumcision that has meaning 
is the circumcision of the heart. In like manner the mere 
assumption of the Christian name does not constitute one 



408 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

a Christian. ** If any man have not the spirit of Christ, 
he is none of his." We have learned that a man is not a 
Christian because he subscribes to a certain creed or be- 
longs to a certain church ; neither is a man a Christian be- 
cause he has attained unto the ideal or is already perfect. 
He is a Christian who has the spirit of Christ and is 
interested in the things that interest Christ. For another 
thing we have learned that the mere incorporation of an 
organization under the Christian name does not by any 
means make a people a Christian church. " But the true 
and grand idea of a church," says Thomas Arnold, ** is 
that of a society for making men like Christ, earth Hke 
heaven, and the kingdoms of this world the kingdom of 
God" (''Life," Let. cxii). We have discovered also 
that a church is not necessarily Christian because it 
possesses an orthodox creed or administers certain ordi- 
nances in an apostolic way; neither is a church Christian 
because of any apostolic succession with a clear line of 
continuity to the apostolic age and with a regular set of 
officers to duplicate the early church. But a church is 
Christian when it has the spirit of Christ and manifests 
the apostolic zeal and love. We may conclude also, that 
a State does not become Christian when it incorporates 
the name of Christ in its constitution or opens the ses- 
sions of Congress with prayer; neither is a State Chris- 
tian when certain theological ideas are embodied in 
its legislation and certain ecclesiastical functionaries dic- 
tate the policy of cabinets. In any real sense a State is 
Christian when it possesses the spirit of Christ and seeks 
certain great Christian ends in and through its life and 
service. 

The conclusion is plain, and its bearing upon the ques- 
tion before us is no less plain. There are certain great 
marks that in a way are characteristic of Christianity 
wherever it appears, whether in the man, in the church. 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 409 

or in the State. As there is a peculiar life and spirit in 
the Christian man with certain aspirations and ideals; as 
there is a peculiar life and spirit in the Christian church 
with certain definite purposes and methods ; so there is a 
peculiar life and spirit in the Christian State with certain 
marked characteristics and aims. As the man who bears 
the Christian name possesses this peculiar Christian 
character in its beginnings at least ; as the church that 
bears the Christian name manifests certain qualities in an 
ever-increasing degree, so the State that is becoming 
Christian bears certain definite characteristics in all its 
forms and features. As the sanctification of the Christian 
believer is his progressive growth into the likeness of 
Christ; as the progress of the Christian church is meas- 
ured by its ever-growing power for service; so the ma- 
king of the Christian State is the development and inten- 
sification of the Christian characteristics in its life and 
functions. 

This brings us to the question which, in a way, lies 
beyond and beneath all of these other questions ; till this 
is answered we shall find no clue to the problem; light 
here is light all along the way. This question we must 
now consider. 

2. What is the kingdom of God, and what is the rela- 
tion between the kingdom and the political State? In 
another study the kingdom of God on earth, the writer 
has considered the first part of this question, and the 
argument of that study need not be reproduced here. 
The kingdom of God, it will probably be admitted by all 
in these times, is the central truth of Christianity, at once 
the formative idea and the ethical center, the one truth 
that explains all other truths and gives them meaning. 
This kingdom of God, it is becoming very plain, is a 
great, all-comprehensive idea, and defines at once the 
whole purpose of God for man, and indicates the whole 



4IO THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

progress of man in the purpose of God. The conception 
of this kingdom runs Hke a thread of gold through the 
whole fabric of the Christian revelation and gives it unity 
and power. At first, it is true, in the early life of Israel 
the idea is vague and indefinite, but as the generations 
pass it runs itself clear in the later prophetic hopes. In 
the Hfe and teaching of the Son of man it is brought out 
into the open, and is given a very definite meaning and 
form. All the hopes and ideals of his people passed into 
his mind and heart, there to be tested and appraised, and 
then to come forth fulfilled and transformed. In his 
hands these hopes and ideals undergo such a purification 
and enlargement that what before was local he makes 
universal, and what was true for Israel he shows is now 
true for the world. From this time forward we have 
the same term, but how much more it connotes! We 
have the same hope, but how much larger it is! Then 
this hope and ideal thus enlarged and universalized Jesus 
returns to his people to become the possession of mankind 
and the inspiration of the race. The men who lived 
with Jesus and became his first disciples, for a time at 
least, shared the common hopes of the people, and for a 
while sadly and persistently misunderstood the Master. 
But in course of time this hope undergoes a gradual 
modification, and the whole later New Testament illus- 
trates the steady unfolding of this idea in the thought and 
life of the early church. In the later Epistles of Paul we 
find the conception coming into prominence of a justi- 
fied and reconciled humanity, a renewed and transformed 
society on earth, fashioned according to the will of God 
and filled with his Spirit (Eph. 2 : 11-22). In the 
Apocalpyse also the seer beholds the heavenly city com- 
ing down from God out of heaven to be set up on earth. 
Beyond the present order of things he sees the walls of 
the city of God rising in the earth, a city where men live 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 4II 

together in peace and brotherhood, a city where all men 
have equal rights to the good things of life, a city into 
which nothing enters that defiles, that works abomina- 
tion or that makes a lie, a city where God dwells among 
men and men live together as his children. The king- 
dom of God, it is evident to the one who studies the 
Scriptures, means much more than a human society on 
earth, but it is certain that it never means less. 

To sum up: The kingdom of God means the growing 
perfection of the collective life of humanity, the redemp- 
tion of man's mental and moral and spiritual life — in 
a word, the creation of a perfect man in a perfect society. 
In one great synthesis is summed up the whole purpose 
of God for man and the whole work of man in the world. 
In one great synthesis is comprehended the regeneration 
of the soul and its renewal in righteousness, the quick- 
ening of the mind, and its instruction in knowledge and 
truth, the rightening and adjustment of man's social and 
political relations, the upbuilding and development and 
perfection of his body, the improvement of the home, the 
perfection of the church, the moralization of the social 
life — in short, the whole personal, mental, moral, spir- 
itual, physical, social, ecclesiastical, industrial, and po- 
litical perfection of man. In one great ideal is gathered 
up the whole purpose of God in the world, and so the 
kingdom contemplates not alone the salvation and per- 
fection of the person, but the redemption and transfor- 
mation of the relations and institutions of his life, the 
family, the church, and the State. The kingdom of God 
includes the whole life of man, and any conception of the 
kingdom that ignores any relation of man's life is by 
that fact so much less than the Christian conception. 

3. What is implied in the conception of man's progress 
and perfection? In these latter times the race is gaining 
what has been called the sense of humanity, and a wholly 



412 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

new conception of solidarity. The time has been when 
men began their thinking with the individual, and con- 
strued morality and progress in terms of individual life. 
But in these times it has become very evident that not 
the individual, but society is the true unit, and that one 
must construe morality and progress in terms of social 
life. There must be a society that there may be individ- 
uals; and paradoxical as it may seem, persons are, only 
because society is. The life of man is rooted in the life 
of humanity. Without society of some kind, the person 
could never be at all in any full and human sense; and 
without society of some form or kind his personality 
could never develop to any conscious and human degree. 
The life of one man is made possible by the lives of many 
men, and an isolated and abstract individual — if such 
were possible — would be a non-human monster. 

This is not all, but one life comes to self-realization in 
and through the lives of others in social relations. Life, 
we have learned, is a matter of relationships, and the 
quality of these relations determines the quality of the 
life. The one man can advance toward personality, and 
self-realization, and salvation only by becoming a mem- 
ber of an organic society and taking his place in the 
common life (Jones, " Social Law in the Spiritual 
World," p. 'jy). The time has gone by when we can 
think of the extrication of the individual from all human 
relations and his perfection in isolation from his fellows. 
The time has come when the one who would think of 
salvation in any real and Christian sense must think of it 
as the salvation of the whole man with the perfection 
of the relations that are inwrought into his very being. 
The salvation of the person in all the length and breadth 
of the term involves the salvation of the society of which 
he is a part. The Son of man has not come to destroy 
but to fulfil; not to mutilate life but to perfect life; not 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 413 

to save men out of the world, but to save theui in the 
world. It is only as man comes into relations with 
others that he arrives at knowledge of himself, and it is 
only as he attains to the realization of the social end 
that he can attain to the realization of the personal end. 
In the last analysis it will be found that these two ends, 
the person and the society, are not really two but one. 
In so far as we come into relations with other human 
beings in the world, we are attaining to a partial reali- 
zation of the ideal which our rational nature sets before 
us. And there is no other way by which we can come to 
such realization. '' It is only in the lives of other human 
beings that we can find a world in which we can live at 
home" (Mackenzie, " Introduc. to Social Philos.," p. 
260). The perfection of man is his perfection in and 
through the relations of his being, and any conception of 
salvation that means less than this perfection of his social 
life falls far below the Christian conception. 

That this is so is made very evident in the Christian 
Scriptures. The hope of the gospel is a social and human 
hope rather than an individual and selfish hope. In the 
Christian conception of life everything is construed in 
terms of the collective life rather than the individual. In 
the Christian's prayer we find that everything is inter- 
preted in terms of the collective good; for men are to 
pray that the Father's kingdom may come, that the Fath- 
er's will may be done, on earth even as in heaven. Then, 
included in these petitions, we find that provision is made 
for our daily bread, for our deliverance from evil, for 
the forgiveness of our sins. Not for himself alone, but 
for all does the Christian pray, for he knows that in the 
blessings that come to all he shall find his own. In the 
apostolic teaching the great truth of solidarity is made 
very plain and cannot be mistaken. Thus the apostle 
defines the work of Christ in terms of human society, and 



414 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

never once in terms of individual isolation. In his teach- 
ing the purpose of God in the world culminates in the 
creation of a humanity that has become the habitation of 
God through the Spirit. He conceives of the life of man 
as that of a member in a body, and the one member is 
saved in and through the salvation of the body. Thus " the 
whole body fitly framed and compact together through 
that which every joint supplieth, according to the working 
in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase 
of the body unto the building up of itself in love " (Eph. 
4 : i6). The apostle never thinks of salvation as a 
purely individual gift that may be enjoyed in isolation, 
but always in terms of human relations and social Hfe. 
And in the Apocalypse this same truth is even more plain. 
It is worth noting that Revelation closes with the concep- 
tion of a holy city that has come down from God out of 
heaven to be set up on earth and to be realized among men. 
Humanity may have begun in a garden, as the book of 
Genesis suggests, but the life of man culminates in a city, 
as Revelation records. One may not agree with Ritschl 
in all of his positions, but he has correctly interpreted the 
essence of Christianity when he declares that it is pri- 
marily social, and that the great truths of religion 
cannot be understood when applied in isolation to the 
individual subject, but only when explained in relation to 
the subject as a member of a community of believers 
(" Justification and Reconciliation," chap. i). The social, 
the collective, the human ideal is preserved throughout, 
and this leads us to think of the ideal condition as life in a 
divine, human, righteous society. The salvation which 
Christ brings " is not finished when a man is forgiven 
or has obtained peace with God; it is completed only 
when Christ is all in all — that is, when humanity has been 
built up in all its parts and regulated in all its relations 
by the ideal of love and sonship that has lived from 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 415 

eternity in the bosom of God" (Fairbairn, ''Religion in 
History and Modern Life," p. 254). The kingdom of 
God is not an anarchy of good individuals, but a society 
of brothers who live together in righteousness and love. 

There must be some medium through which men can 
express their social fellowship and co-operate for the com- 
jmon good. " We have such a medium," men say; '' it is 
the church ; it is the body of Christ and the agency of the 
kingdom." So far so good ; but as every one knows large 
sections of life lie beyond the boundaries of the church ; 
and by the very nature of the case the church has its own 
special aims and methods. We must either admit, there- 
fore, that large provinces of Hfe lie beyond the sover- 
eignty of God and the interest of the Christian, or we 
must find some agency through which we can co-operate 
in promoting the wide interests of life, and in which we 
can express our Christian principles. The State, in 
some form, is necessary if men are to seek the whole 
kingdom of God. This is not all; but since Christian 
men are members of the State, they must carry the 
Christian spirit into all the relations and realms of so- 
ciety. They must do one of two things ; they must either 
renounce their citizenship in the civil State, or they must 
carry the Christian ideal into every province and seek to 
build the State after the divine ideal. To renounce one's 
citizenship is to throw away one of the most precious 
opportunities of life; to limit the Christian ideal and to 
exclude the Christian spirit from any province of life is 
treason against the kingdom of God. To follow the 
Christian ideal and honor one's citizenship means the 
building up in the earth of a Christian State. Thus the 
Christian form of the State is inevitable if men are to 
seek the whole kingdom of God. 

Thus all the various lines of thought converge at one 
point and lead to one conclusion. The life of the king- 



4l6 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

doni, being a social life, creates around itself a human 
society; the Christian conception of the kingdom of God 
on earth implies the perfection of life in its social rela- 
tions ; the perfection of man involves the perfection of the 
social and political institutions of his life. 

II. The Building of the Christian State is the Task Set 
Before the Christian Citizen. The very nature of Chris- 
tianity and the very nature of man make several things, 
very plain. For one thing, Christianity is a social religion, 
and the ideal of the kingdom of God is a social ideal. 
Nothing less, then, or lower than a social realization, 
can satisfy the purpose of Christianity. For another 
thing, Christianity can never be isolated and made a 
purely personal matter. They wrong Christianity and 
defecate it of all meaning who would treat it in this way 
and would regard it as an abstract and vague something 
or nothing that has no relation to the whole life of man. 
The principles of Christianity cannot work in a vacuum, 
and they are not mere counsels of perfection ; on the con- 
trary their confessed sphere of manifestation is human 
life with its interests and relations. 

Again, the great virtues of Christianity are social vir- 
tues, and must have social expression. It is not enough 
that there be honesty and justice, sincerity and love in 
the hearts of men; these qualities, to have their largest 
meaning and fullest value, must express themselves in 
social institutions and human relations. The fact is, per- 
sonal goodness and private virtue are never more than 
mere abstractions till they are expressed in outward acts 
and social forms. It has become very plain that abstract 
goodness is at best an impossible thing, an abstract 
nothing; the man who is good is good in a definite and 
concrete situation, and no other kind of goodness is con- 
ceivable. So also love is not a vague and impersonal feel- 
ing, but a definite and personal relation; the man who 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 417 

loves always loves some one. The just man is just in a 
certain concrete relation with his fellows ; and any other 
conception is inconceivable (King, "Rational Living," 
chap, xi; Small, '* General Sociology," Part VIII). And 
for a last thing, Christianity can never attain to its full 
power till it is expressed in social forms. Any attempt to 
realize the full purpose of God must carry one out into 
social life and inspire him to build the Christian State. 
" Never in any case will Christianity appear in individ- 
uals without at the same time appearing in the form of a 
society" (Martensen, "Christian Ethics, General," Sec. 
70). That is, the Christian life by its very nature and 
quality must seek to build around itself a body in which it 
can dwell and through which it can reveal its power. The 
idea of the kingdom of God includes the whole life of 
man, his personal and his family life, his church and his 
social life. Hence the programme of the kingdom must 
comprehend the perfection of man in all the realms and 
relations of his being with the transformation of all the 
institutions of his life. 

This conception of Christianity imposes a new obliga- 
tion upon the mind and heart of the Christian disciple- 
ship. Thus far Christianity has proved its ability to 
create the finest and highest type of personal morality 
and saintly life. The spirit of Christ came as a new 
creative spirit brooding over the abyss of human degrada- 
tion in the pagan world and bringing forth new types of 
manhood. Before long the Christians were noted for their 
pure lives and their loving service, and even their enemies 
were compelled to mark and admire. In the progress of 
the centuries this ideal has developed and unfolded, and 
new aspects of it have been seen and loved. Without fear 
Christianity can point to the lives of men and women as 
illustrations of its power to transform human lives and to 
create the finest type of personal Christian character. 

2B 



4l8 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

And the spirit of Christ dwelHng in men has created 
the Christian family. Christianity arose at a time when 
the bonds of human society were dissolving, and when 
marriage was lightly esteemed. But in this time the 
gospel began its changeful but triumphant career, and 
soon its effects are noticed in Roman society. The home 
life of the Christians was remarkable for its purity and 
stability, and in the truest sense it may be said that the 
Christian family came into being. This is one of the 
great achievements of the Christian spirit, and through it 
there is given new hope for the future of the world. 

Not only so, but the Christian spirit has created the 
Christian church, an achievement of no less significance. 
This church has been a continual witness for God and, for 
the things eternal ; it has come to men with a message of 
hope and love, and it has wrought wonders in human 
lives. It is easy for any one who is so inclined to frame a 
heavy indictment against the churches and to sustain that 
indictment at the bar of history. There have been times 
when the churches have been cold and worldly, when 
they have forgotten the real message of Christ and have 
hardly lisped the first syllable of his truth ; in fact, there 
have been times when the churches have been practically 
antichristian and when the men who wanted to remain 
Christians were obliged to step outside of their bound- 
aries. But with it all the churches not only have endured, 
but they have shown a wonderful power of moral re- 
newal, and their words and works are a witness to the 
spirit of Christ. These things, thus enumerated, are all 
triumphs of the Christian spirit, and are illustrations of 
the Christian ideal, and they are to be classed among the 
great Gesta Christi. 

But now, at last, the Christian has become a citizen, 
and in a way is responsible for the State's struggle for 
life and progress. It is a fact worthy of careful con- 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 419 

sideration that in lands where Christianity is most reg- 
nant the government is most democratic. It is a fmida- 
mental principle of the Christian Hfe, that one is to do 
everything in the name and for the ends of Jesus Christ ; 
his whole Hfe is to be lived out under the dominion of 
his Master, as his whole effort in the world is the en- 
deavor to realize the Christian ideal in all the relations 
and realms of his life. The Christian has become a citizen, 
and is called to the privilege of sovereignty in the State. 
The Christian citizen has the ideal of a Christian society, 
and he is called to justify his faith in his deeds. Thus, 
by the very necessities of the case, the Christian citizen is 
summoned to the task of creating in the earth the 
Christian type of human society. 

In these times men are coming to what may be called 
social self-consciousness, and through this self-conscious- 
ness they are discovering that many things in their lives, 
and in society, are contrary to the Christian ideal. But 
by the very terms of that ideal the men who profess and 
call themselves Christian are pledged to be faithful to it, 
and seek its realization in the world. It hence follows 
that the Christian ideal fairly and fully commits men to 
the task of building up in the earth a better and more 
Christian type of human society. This is the task that 
cannot be shirked by those who bear the Christian name 
and cherish the Christian hope. For men to say that the 
purpose of Christ has no relation to the State, is to ex- 
clude nine-tenths of life from the kingdom of God, be- 
little that kingdom, and deny Christ's claim to universal 
kingship. The man who believes in Jesus Christ must 
repudiate all such conceptions as these, and must dare to 
assert Christ's right to social headship. One cannot be- 
lieve in a Christ who is Lord and King and then narrow 
and limit his sovereignty to any special realm. Not only 
so, but for men to say that Christianity has no message 



420 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

and no meaning for the great world of social interests is 
to discount that gospel at the very start. The men who 
advocate these views know not what they do ; for they are 
making it hard for the modern world to have any interest 
in such an emasculated and small gospel, and they are 
giving color to the belief of many that Christianity is out- 
grown and belongs to the museum of antiquities. And 
once more, for men to say, as many are now saying, that . 
in the Christianity we now have there is no power ade- 
quate to this task of social regeneration and reconstruc- 
tion is really to wound Christianity in the house of its 
friends. The fact is, a gospel that is not competent to 
meet the whole need of man is simply no gospel at all. A 
gospel of redemption that must abandon the world and 
must concern itself only with a few individuals who are 
saved out of the world, has no meaning for humanity, and 
might as well be cast aside at once. But such we believe 
is not the gospel of Christianity which is here to save the 
world and to bring in the kingdom of God. 

The struggle of the world religions is upon us, and the 
law of the survival of the fittest applies here as else- 
where. It is simply folly for Christians to complain of 
this law and try to keep Christianity out of comparison 
with the other religions of the world. It is especially 
short-sighted and vain for them to avoid the simple test — 
the test of fruits — which the Master has himself proposed. 
The gospel, it is conceded, has demonstrated its ability to 
create the finest type of personal morality ; it has proved 
its ability to create the Christian home and the Christian 
church, which are achievements of no little moment. 
While this is much, this is not by any means all that we 
ask of a religion. Christianity must now prove its power 
to create the finest and highest type of social and political 
life, and by its ability to do this it will be rated in the days 
to come. " This is the work set before the missionary 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 42 1 

will and reason of the Church. This is the thing that 
Christianity must do in order to carry off from the great 
debate of comparative reHgions the prize of the world's 
allegiance" (Nash, ''Ethics and Revelation," p. 167). 
The time is coming, and it is even now here, when Chris- 
tianity is to be judged by its ability to create a higher 
and diviner type of human society. A religion that makes 
no provision for many great interests of life and falls short 
of the whole nature of man can neither be the final nor 
the perfect religion. Hence, the very plain and urgent 
duty resting upon all who call themselves Christians and 
who cherish the ideal of the kingdom of God, is to build 
up in the earth a Christian society that is founded upon 
righteousness and love, a society that is fashioned after 
the divine pattern — in short, a society that is nothing 
less than the kingdom of God. To this task the Christian 
citizen is fairly committed by the Christian ideal, and to 
this task he is fully called by the needs of humanity itself. 
The nature of Christianity and the processes of history 
have squarely committed to the Christian citizen this task 
of building a Christian State. 

III. The Nature of the Christian State. That the 
Christian citizen is called and committed to the task of 
building a Christian State, the social realization of the 
kingdom of God, is a legitimate conclusion of all that has 
been said thus far. But this idea of the Christian State 
needs to be carefully analyzed and defined that it may be 
separated from some of its counterfeits. Not only so, 
but there are many who object to this conclusion, in whole 
or in part, in the name of religion and also of irreligion ; 
for they see in it — or fancy they see in it — a grave danger. 
At once the specter of a theocratic government starts up 
in their minds to terrify them. They affirm that this idea 
of the Christian State is simply the old idea of theocracy 
masquerading under a new name, but unchanged in 



422 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

character. Great is cant and incomprehensible is the 
aversion of men to things they do not understand. And 
yet it must be admitted that this fear of theocracy is not 
entirely without reason in view of the many things that 
have passed for theocracy during the history of man. 

I. In the Christian centuries many attempts have been 
made to found Christian communities and to realize on 
earth the kingdom of God. These efforts illustrate and 
confirm the statement of Professor Seeley that religion 
is the great State-builder, and that the foundations of all 
States are laid in religion (" Natural Religion," chap. iv). 
These experiments in behalf of a Christian society consti- 
tute a brilliant page of human history that should be 
better known than is now the case.^ Thus far, however, 
no comprehensive study has been made of these various 
efforts to establish a Christian society and thus to actual- 
ize the kingdom of God. It is not necessary here, and it 
is not possible, to give even an outline of these various 
attempts. But all of these experiments, it may be ob- 
served, have been vitiated by one or another error, and 
have failed from one of two reasons. In some cases they 
have been almost wholly ecclesiastical in character, as in 
the Roman Catholic branch of the church; or they have 
been markedly theological in quality, as in the Protestant 
division of Christendom. 

In the Catholic branch of the church a studied effort 
has been made from the time of Constantine, to found 
a Christian society and to build a Christian State. In a 
number of lands, as in Italy, Spain, France, Austria, the 
Church has claimed authority over the State, and has 

^ Some of these experiments have been considered in some of their aspects by 
Fremantle in his notable study "The World as the Subject of Redemption," and 
by Westcott in his suggestive book " The Social Aspects of Christianity." One 
remarkable experiment has been discussed by Bryce in his epoch-making book 
"The Holy Roman Empire," and still other aspects of the question have been 
studied by the historians of the various socialistic communities. 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 423 

sought to reduce the world under the dominion of 
Christ's vicegerent. These efforts have not only not 
succeeded, but they have led men astray from the right 
path and have put back the cause of human progress. In 
the Protestant division of Christendom a number of efforts 
have been made to found Christian communities, but thus 
far these efforts have had a theological basis. The theo- 
cratic State of Calvin was of this order; the Solemn 
League and Covenant of Scotland was a theological 
document; the Puritan and Pilgrim colonies of 
New England were founded on this idea and were 
dominated by doctrinal tests. All these were brave and 
honest efforts to found a Christian society and actualize 
on earth the kingdom of God ; but these experiments all 
failed, as they were bound to fail, for the simple reason 
that their foundations were theological. To Calvinist 
and Puritan the world owes an immeasurable debt of 
gratitude, for they both asserted the right of the human 
spirit to be free from the domination of a Church. But 
from the experiments of both the Calvinist and Puritan 
the world turns away in disappointment realizing that 
they have missed the road to the Christian State. 

2. The Christian State does not mean any of the things 
that men have tried to make it mean. It does not mean 
the supremacy of a priesthood, though it does mean the 
sovereignty of God; in fact, the sovereignty of God, 
rightly conceived, means the denial of a distinctly priestly 
class. It does not mean the supremacy of the church 
over the State. One of the most stupendous blunders 
of the ages has been the confounding of the church with 
the kingdom of God. The church is simply a means to an 
end, and the kingdom only is ultimate. The kingdom is 
the wider category and includes the whole life of man, 
spiritual, moral, personal, social, temporal, and eternal. 
Church and State are only so many realms in which the 



4^4 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

reign of God is realized ; both are means to an end, and 
both are subordinate to the kingdom itself. It is an 
arrogance approaching blasphemy for either church or 
State to claim lordship over the other— that very lord- 
ship which belongs only to the kingdom of God. We 
could as easily tolerate a State supremacy over 
the church as a church supremacy over the State. 
The church is itself subordinate to the kingdom and 
has no warrant for assuming lordship over any other 
sphere. The King of the kingdom is the head over all 
things, and for the church to arrogate to itself this func- 
tion is to dethrone the King and climb into his seat. The 
Romanist is eternally right when he declares that the 
State must be subordinate to God; but he is as eternally 
wrong when he declares that the King has delegated a 
portion of his authority over the State to the Church of 
Rome. 

Nor does the Christian State mean the dominance 
of a system of theological thought in human society. 
The fact is one thing, and the explanation of the fact 
is quite another thing. Creeds and theologies are state- 
ments of human belief, attempts to explain the great 
facts of God and man, words thrown out at great real- 
ities, the effort to correlate some of the doctrines of the 
Christian faith. At best all such creeds and theological 
systems are but men's conceptions of things, approxi- 
mations to the truth, tentative efforts of human thought, 
and hence never finalities and fixities. 

Our little systems have their day, 
They have their day and cease to be; 
They are but broken lights of Thee, 

And thou, O Christ, art more than they. 

Not only so, but men's relations with one another are 
personal through and through, and have thus some deeper 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 425 

and stronger basis than an intellectual one. To attempt 
to build a Christian society upon an intellectual and 
creedal basis is to misconceive the very nature of man and 
is to assume an artificial ground for human association. 
To attempt to bring human society under the authority of 
a system of theological thought is to misconceive the 
.^very nature of the kingdom and miss the whole meaning 
of the Christian State. We are not surprised, therefore, 
to find that all attempts thus far made to build a Christian 
society on a theological basis and to subordinate the 
State to a system of theology should so signally fail. 
And yet Calvinist and Puritan were eternally right when 
they affirmed that the goal of God's purpose was the estab- 
lishment on earth of a holy State in which God was the 
sole and rightful King; they were as eternally wrong 
when they endeavored to construe this kingdom in theo- 
logical categories and impose them upon the minds of men. 

3. The attempts thus far made to found a Christian 
State have had a theocratic color, with an ecclesiastical 
or theological basis, and for this reason they were doomed 
to failure. But however many and disappointing have 
been the failures of the past each age is called to attempt 
once more the divine task of building up in the earth a 
Christian State that shall be the human realization of the 
kingdom of God. There are three considerations that 
are of great service here, and will enable us to perceive 
the real nature of the Christian State. 

For one thing, the Christian order of society is inspi- 
rational rather than institutional. That this is so is made 
very plain by the very nature of Christianity itself. The 
fundamental conception of Christianity is that God is an 
essentially moral and spiritual being. Judaism and Chris- 
tianity are entirely unique among the religions of the 
world in this particular; they both have as their founda- 
tion the conception of a God who, in the very essence of 



426 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

his being is holiness and love. Judaism, it has been said, 
was the only religion in the ancient world whose God 
had a moral character (Geo. Adam Smith, " Book of the 
Twelve Prophets," Vol. I, p. 55). Christianity enlarges 
and fulfils this idea of Judaism and makes it the posses- 
sion of the human race. The sovereignty of God, it fol- 
lows from all this, is that of a moral and spiritual 
authority over men. By the nature of the case it is 
neither an ecclesiastical rule nor a theological authority, 
but a personal relation and a spiritual sovereignty. The 
God of Christianity is neither an ecclesiastical pope nor a 
theological abstraction, but a moral personality and a 
spiritual character. Adapting the statement of Matheson, 
we may say that faith in God is a vision of his moral 
perfection and an aspiration of soul after his spiritual 
ideal. The man who believes in God, " believes in the 
beauty of goodness, the desirableness of purity, and the 
right of righteousness to be ultimately triumphant " 
(Matheson, ''Landmarks of N. T. Morality," p. 108). 
Faith in God is faith in godliness with the choice of 
godliness. The kingship of God over men and societies 
manifests itself, not in the dominion of an ecclesiastical 
machine bearing his name, not in the prevalence of a 
theological system in which he is the logical center, but 
in the enthronement of his moral personality as the in- 
spiration of men and the fulfilment of his righteousness 
as the law of human relations. It is well to remember 
that while religion seeks and finds expression in creeds 
and becomes organic and real in institutions, yet the 
fortune and fate of religion itself are not bound up with 
success or failure of our creeds and institutions. 

For another reason, the Son of man did not come to 
create an institution, but to give life. An institutional 
rule of men is not God's ideal for men. Christ's rule is 
not external and formal, a matter of statutes and insti- 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 427 

tutions ; it is an inward control, a moral dynamic, a right- 
eous impulse, an all-controlling mind. The kingdom of 
God, says the apostle, is not meat and drink, but right- 
eousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom. 14 : 
17). The kingdom comes less by statutes than by inspi- 
rations; it is hastened by ideals rather than by institu- 
tions. Tolstoy is right when he insists that little can 
be done for men till the Christian ideal of life 
prevails. The Christian conception of God is that of 
moral and spiritual personality, who in the very essence 
of his being is righteousness and love. The man who 
believes in God and seeks his kingdom lives under the 
authority of the divine ideal and makes the idea of the 
kingdom his guiding principle. What does this mean? 
It means that in the great correlated truths of Father- 
hood and Brotherhood we have the measure and type and 
inspiration of every personal and social obligation. It 
means also that social customs will be made, legislative 
halls will be conscienced, national policies will be motived, 
industrial systems will be inspired, by the great eternal 
principles of the kingdom. 

Thus the Christian State is the necessary outcome of 
the Christian life. In the progress of history and the 
providences of God it has come about that Christian men 
are more and more called to the privilege of citizenship 
in the great nations of the world. This democratic 
movement has behind it the whole inspiration of Chris- 
tianity, and the whole prestige of history, and democracy 
will more and more become regnant as Christianity more 
and more makes its way. There is some great meaning in 
this movement, and there are some great responsibilities 
resting upon Christian men. It means that Christian 
men are more and more coming to have a part in making 
laws, and selecting rulers, in determining policies, and 
building political States. This brings us face to face 



428 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

with the question of the relation of the Christian man 
to pubHc affairs, 

4. Religion, the religion of Christianity, is all-per- 
vasive and all-determining. It means the pervasion of 
life in all its spheres and relations with the spirit of 
Christ, with the determination of life in all its interests 
and purposes by that spirit. Whatever the Christian does 
in word or in deed, in the Church or in the State, he does 
in the name of Christ and for his ends. The special acts 
of his life are only the manifestation of the life within, 
as the life within finds expression in the deed without. 
No man can be a Christian in one part of his life and a 
pagan in the other. The Christian who is a citizen must 
be a Christian citizen; that is, the acts of his citizenship 
are the flower and fruitage of his inner spirit. This 
means a great deal more than appears on the surface, and 
it has consequences that are simply immeasurable. 

The Christian citizen is a man who has the Christian 
ideal and lives by the Christian spirit. By the very 
necessities of the case he will seek to realize that ideal in 
the life of the State and in society. Soon or late he who 
would be true to Christ finds himself confronted with 
these alternatives: Whether he will have nothing to do 
with political affairs; or whether he will make the acts 
of his citizenship the fulfilment of his Christian Hfe. 
He must pursue the one course or the other. Either he 
must refrain from all participation in civil matters, or 
he must make all the acts of his citizenship the expression 
of his deepest consciousness. To refrain from all par- 
ticipation in public affairs is neither the wise nor the 
Christian thing to do. For no interest of man can be 
alien to the Christian as no part of life can lie outside 
the purpose of Christ To go out into the State and live 
in the spirit of Christ, to seek the Christian ideal and to 
confess his faith in act, is the plain duty that lies upon the 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 429 

Christian citizen. The Christian who votes must make 
his vote a confession of faith; the Christian who is in 
the hall of legislation must make the civil statute his 
interpretation of the Christian ideal; the Christian who 
administers law administers as a Christian in fulfilment 
of the gracious purpose of the Father of mankind con- 
cerning his children; the Christian who is planning for 
the city's good is seeking to build on earth a city after 
the pattern of the city of God. In every act and activity 
of his life, whether in the church or in the State, the 
Christian man makes the will and purpose of God his 
supreme and final standard. In every relation and sphere 
of life he must be true to his Lord and must seek to make 
the Christian ideal an earthly reality. 

A man's belief in God is his programme of action. A 
nation's faith is written out in the nation's policy. The 
things men do are the revelations of the things men are. 
The statutes of a State are the written articles in its 
confession of faith. This being so, men show what 
manner of men they are by their deeds and words in 
political caucuses as well as in prayer meetings ; in the 
way they conduct their business and frame their laws 
they show what kind of spirit they possess. The govern- 
mental regulations, the constitution and laws of a people, 
their social and industrial institutions, their policies, 
whether national or international, are the revelations of 
their life and the confession of their faith. Politics is 
the art of applied religion. Social justice is men's inter- 
pretation of human brotherhood. Civil law is the people's 
statement of doctrine. Political institutions are men's 
practice of the Golden Rule. It is in their political 
life that the real religion of a people is expressed and 
realized. 

Christianity is the nature of things. The foundations 
of society are moral, spiritual, Christian foundations. No 



43^ THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Other order of society than the Christian order is either 
stable or permanent. Just so far as society builds upon 
the principles and spirit and life of the kingdom of 
God that far it will be progressive and peaceful. Just 
so far as it ignores the life and spirit and principles of the 
kingdom, that far it will be unstable and full of unrest. 
All human legislation has validity and power in so far as 
it embodies in laws the principles of the kingdom; and 
all progress is to be measured by the fulfilment of the 
purpose of God in the life of humanity. The fact is, 
humanity can never know itself and its goal apart from 
the kingdom of God ; and humanity can never reach its 
goal and end apart from the life and power of the 
kingdom. The kingdoms of the earth typified by the lion, 
the bear, the eagle, all fall and vanish and make way for 
the kingdom of man (Dan. 7 : 1-14). The only pos- 
sible foundation for society is the life and spirit and law 
of the Son of man, the King of the kingdom. The build- 
ers of earth may reject Him whom God has appointed to 
be the chief corner-stone ; they may say. Go to ; let us 
build a great nation by our own ingenuity and wisdom 
and power. But in this way Babels and Babylons are 
built, and not great and enduring States. Men may 
frame their constitutions, and may devise their govern- 
mental systems with a careful provision of checks and 
balances ; but it will avail them little unless the spirit of 
Christ is in their plans and the laws of Christ are in their 
lives. As certainly as God lives, as certainly as this uni- 
verse is built on moral principles, so certainly will this 
nation or any other crumble and end in dismal failure 
whose only bond of unity is a written constitution, and 
whose only polity is a balance of expediencies. The 
words with which Mulford closes his great book on the 
nation cannot be too strongly emphasized : " It is only 
as the nation recognizes the law of humanity which He 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 43 1 

(God) has revealed that it attains the reahzation of its 

being" (p. 412). 

IV. The Christianization of the State. The Hfe of 
the kingdom is working in the world and is seeking real- 
ization in social forms. The ideal of the kingdom is here 
pointing the way of human progress and inspiring the 
prophetic soul of the wide world. 

I. But men, Christian men, have not allowed this life to 
do its perfect work in the wider relations of society ; they 
have not accepted the Christian ideal in all its meaning 
and power, and so they have not borne this ideal into 
every province of life. They have said that the king- 
dom of God is a divine society and, as it is impossible to 
build a city of God out of earthly men, we cannot expect 
a Christian society in the present order of things. Be it 
so, but there are Christian men in the world, true chil- 
dren of the kingdom, suitable stones for the walls of 
the new city. Why then should not these children of the 
kingdom, these living stones, set to work together to 
build up in the earth this city of God? Why should 
not this divine life in men — which is a social life — be 
allowed to have its way and create a society after its own 
type? To become organic, to clothe itself in fitting 
forms is the one aim and effort of all life ; and the life of 
the kingdom by its very nature is organic and organific. 

" But then this life works from within, and the State 
works from without, and hence the life of the kingdom 
and the machinery of the State work in different spheres 
and at different levels." Granted that this life does work 
from within, yet it works outward through all the rela- 
tions and realms of life. By the very necessities of the 
case it must soon or late manifest itself in visible forms 
and create around itself a fit and appropriate body. This 
is certain, that we must either expect this divine life to 
permeate and transform the world — and if it permeate 



43^ THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

the world it must transform it — or we must consent that 
this Hfe shall remain isolated and limited, which means 
that we must leave great spheres of interest beyond its 
reach and influence. The latter alternative is simply 
impossible to the man who believes in the kingdom of 
God and the universality of Christianity. It follows that 
we must either abandon the idea of the kingdom of God 
and believe in a provincial Christianity which is no Chris- , 
tianity at all, or we must expect the life of the kingdom 
as manifest in Christian men, to enter the world, to con- 
trol all life, and transform society into its own likeness. 

2. This Christian spirit, it may be said, is at work in 
the modern world, and the characteristics of the Chris- 
tian State are beginning to appear. And this Christian 
spirit will abide in the world, and it will continue to 
work until it has transformed everything into its own 
likeness. This Christian spirit may work quietly, so 
quietly at times that men hardly detect its presence, but 
it will work potently and it will never rest till it has had 
its perfect work. It will go forth into the world to take 
of the ideal of Christ and show it unto men ; it will give 
men a new conviction of sin and a new standard of 
righteousness; it will intensify in men a new passion for 
justice, and will drive them forth in a new campaign for 
truth; it will arouse men to challenge as with the light- 
ning of God everything that injures man and wrongs child- 
hood; it will send men forth in the wrath of the Lamb 
to cast out of their cities of earth the things that defile, 
that work abomination and that make a lie. It will under- 
mine and repudiate many of the social sentiments that 
have long held sway, and will annul some of the com- 
mercial systems that have long prevailed. It will teach 
men to regard with the horror now shown the man- 
hunter, the buccaneer, and the wrecker, the men who 
exploit the labor of others and grow rich by speculating 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 433 

in breadstuffs. It will inspire men to contemplate 
with shame and aversion the men who live in 
idleness and luxury on the toil of others without 
giving society a fair equivalent. It will win its first 
victories, no doubt, in mitigating the severity of the 
social struggle, and thus making it possible for every 
man to keep his footing in society. It will inspire men to 
labor and serve that every soul may have a fair inher- 
itance in life. It will move men to infuse the Christian 
spirit into every realm and to realize the law of brother- 
hood in every sphere of industry. It will quicken men 
into a new allegiance to the ideal of the kingdom, and 
it will hearten them to go forth and hold up that ideal 
in the sight of all in the confidence that this ideal can win 
its way and supplant all others; in a word, it will work 
on and work out, never resting, never ceasing until it has 
made all things new. 

This spirit will manifest itself not alone in the lives 
of individual men, but in their associated efforts in 
society. Under the increasing sway of this spirit citizens 
of missionary zeal will organize industries and trades not 
for the enrichment of the few, but for the profit of the 
many. Men of commercial capacity will put their talents 
in pledge for the benefit of the commonwealth, and not 
for their own. ' Men of character and capacity will seek 
to create social institutions and frame laws that will bring 
the strength and wisdom of all to bear upon the weak- 
ness and need of each. Men who bear the Christian name 
will more and more perceive that conduct is not a matter 
of customary practice and legal enactment, but of love 
and brotherhood. Under the increasing sway of the 
Christian spirit men will realize that the only standard of 
life is the spirit of Calvary, and the only interpretation of 
law is the mind of Christ. Under the increasing sway 
of this spirit the citizen who would be justified by faith 

2C 



434 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

and have peace with God, must have a vision of God's 
ideal of society and must accept that ideal as the law of 
his life. He will find the seal of the Spirit and the wit- 
ness of his sonship in his love for men and his anxiety 
for their welfare, and he will more and more make the 
duties of his citizenship the altar of his service. 

3. In what kind of poHtical programmes and social 
institutions the Christian ideal and the Christian spirit 
will embody themselves it is too early in the day to fore- 
see. Life — it is a familiar truth — is the cause of organi- 
zation; and organization — it is no less certain — follows 
life. The Christian life is organic, and seeks to create a 
body in which it may fully realize its inner nature. The 
kingdom of God is not an institution, and it can never be 
embodied in one, and yet it is the constitutive power and 
regulative ideal of every institution of man or of society. 
The spirit of Christ is ever seeking to become organic in 
human lives and institutions, and it cannot rest until 
it has attained its goal. The social conscience, to be 
efifective and permanent, must realize and perpetuate 
itself in social laws and political states. Thus the life of 
the kingdom, the spirit of Christ, the conscience of man, 
will express themselves in certain programmes, create 
around themselves various institutions, and become 
organic in poHtical forms. But it must be remembered 
that these forms and institutions and programmes are 
but the temporary body and transient expressions of this 
spirit and life and conscience, and that the fate and 
fortunes of the kingdom are not bound up with any 
of the forms and expressions of the kingdom's life. Life 
must ever be free to express itself according to its own 
nature, and life must also be free to adapt itself to new 
conditions. 

It is quite possible that many programmes may be 
evolved as the generations go by and many experiments 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 435 

may be tried as men build the Christian city. It is 
hence quite possible that some of the current systems of 
men, known as labor co-partnership and the co-operative 
commonwealth, socialism and the social State— in so far 
as they have the mind of Christ and illustrate the prin- 
ciples of the kingdom— may do something to bring the 
world a step nearer its goal. But we must expect these 
systems to be outgrown, one and all, as society moves on 
in fulfilment of the purpose of God. 

The serf of his own past is not a man; 

To change and change is life, to move and never rest; 

Not what we are, but what we hope is best. 

— Lowell: The Pioneer. 

This spirit of Christ will create in men a Christian con- 
science, and this conscience, being Christian, will be 
an urgent and militant thing. It will have little patience 
with the doctrines of laissez faire, which teach that we 
must not meddle with nature's operations, and that we 
cannot hasten nature's processes. And it will have scant 
patience with that shallow pessimism which teaches that 
nothing can be done under the present order of things 
to improve the world and to Christianize society. It is 
not easy to say which is the worse doctrine, that doctrine 
of optimism which asserts that everything is coming out 
all right and there is nothing for man to do; or that 
doctrine of pessimism which declares that everything is 
hopelessly wrong and that nothing will avail that man 
can do. The Christian spirit will have little to do with 
either of these doctrines, but it will inspire men to go 
forward and live the truth in life and deed; it will impel 
them to make experiments in the confidence that any 
experiment that will improve by a hair's breadth the con- 
dition of a single soul is the translation into deed of some 
article of the Christian faith. 



436 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

4. That the Christian State is yet far away in the 
future must be admitted by every informed man. That 
the characteristics of Christianity are yet graven deep 
into the hfe and purposes of society no one will probably 
care to assert. The leaven is here, we believe, and it is 
at work, but it has not yet by any means leavened the 
whole lump. Christianity has penetrated the life of the 
nations, but it has not yet transformed a single city. 
The man who would speak of a Christian State must use 
the future tense, and must live by faith. A Christian 
State ! And yet in the most Christian State we find that 
six times as much money is spent for intoxicating liquors 
as for the whole work of God in the world ; we find in 
this State that thousands of women are annually tolled 
off to minister to the lawless passions of men, and society 
regards all this as inevitable ; we find that thousands of 
women, owing to confining labor and small remuner- 
ation, are under a continual temptation to barter woman- 
hood' for gain. A Christian State ! And yet, in this 
State, in its chief city, one-tenth of all the burials are in 
potter's field, and forty per cent, of the families live^ in 
one room ; in this city are tenements not fit for pigsties, 
where women fight with fever and infants pant for air 
and wail out their little lives ; in this city whole sections 
are given over to vice and crime and slums, and at every 
turn is the brilliant grog shop and hard by is the gilded 
den and the house of infamy. A Christian society! 
And in this society the prizefighter and professional ball- 
player receive larger salaries and more newspaper notice 
than the university professor or the Christian prophet ; 
in this society the rich and idle spend their time and 
money on tennis and golf, in horse-racing and bird- 
shooting, while millions of their fellows toil without rest 
or hope ;'in this society it is still thought necessary to build 
great battleships and to glorify the art of war. A Chris- 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 437 

tian State! And in this State Congress spends far more 
time debating questions of revenue and finance than edu- 
cation and morahty; in this State the railroads kill 
thousands of men every year because they find that men 
are cheaper than safety appliances ; in this State measures 
to protect women and children are delayed and defeated, 
v^hile measures to protect sheep and horses are im- 
mediately passed and enforced. Yes, some would say, it 
is a Christian State, for Christ has been named in it ; and 
thousands of spires are pointing heavenward ; hospitals 
and schools are found here and there throughout the land, 
and every one is free to worship God as his conscience 
dictates. No, we must say it is only remotely and ap- 
proximately Christian as yet, and the streets of the new 
city are hardly staked out. 

But that this Christian State is beginning to appear 
and society is moving toward its goal, must also be con- 
fessed. The State is becoming Christian and men are 
beginning to believe that it is not necessary that there 
should be so much waste in society with so many lives 
stunted and disfigured ; and they are beginning to seek 
and find some collective means and methods whereby 
they may seek for the kingdom of God. The State is 
becoming Christian, for men are beginning to give more 
attention to its positive than to its negative functions; 
they are coming to see that the State is the conserver of 
human well-being and the promoter of good life; they 
are beginning to consider ways and means for equalizing 
opportunity and giving every child a fair inheritance in 
society; the State is becoming Christian, for in this 
America the most splendid building is a library which is 
a national confession of faith ; and in this land men are 
catching glimpses of a holy city coming down from God 
out of heaven, and are seeking to create a society into 
which nothing enters that defiles. The State is becoming 



43^ THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

Christian, for men are beginning to labor for a social 
order in which a Christian man can live and trade without 
the continual temptation to sacrifice principle in order to 
maintain one's self; they are beginning to beUeve that it 
is possible to build in the earth a society in which the 
children of God can live as brothers and the Spirit of God 
can find itself at home. Society is becoming Christian, 
for men are beginning to believe in the divine ideal, and 
are coming to feel that it is practicable and possible ; they 
are beginning to labor that this world may be a purer 
place for children to be born into and a fairer world for 
departing saints to look back upon ; they are beginning to 
realize that the building up in the earth of the city of 
God is the task that is set before them all, and in the 
prosecution of this task they will find their own lives 
and receive the seal of the Father's approval. Yes, the 
State is becoming Christian, for men are beginning to 
see that it is a divinely appointed agency in the making of 
men, and is the best medium through which the people 
may co-operate in their search after the righteousness of 
the kingdom. 

But the State will not be fully Christian till the great 
principles of the kingdom — righteousness, peace, and 
joy in the Holy Spirit, with their modern equivalents 
liberty, equality, and fraternity — are realized in the in- 
dustrial, the social, and the political systems of men as 
well as in their personal lives, their families, and their 
churches. It will not be Christian till the lowliest mem- 
ber of society has been given a fair opportunity for life, 
and for the possession and appreciation of its best things. 
It will not be Christian till the infinite worth of every man 
has been recognized, and conditions have been secured 
which shall give all men an equal opportunity for the 
expression of their powers and the development of their 
personalities. It will not be Christian till human brother- 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 439 

hood has become as real in the industrial world as in the 
family circle, and industry " is so organized that every 
honest and willing worker can find work, and work so 
remunerative as to give him and his children an oppor- 
tunity for self-development as well as for mere life " 
(Abbott, " The Evolution of Christianity," p. 201). " It 
will not be fully Christian till the democracy of political 
power, founded upon religion and education, shall be 
accompanied with a social and industrial democracy, 
wherein the tool workers have become tool owners and 
class antagonisms are settled by the simple expedient of 
making the same class of men both capitalist and laborer. 
It will not be Christian till all service is honorable and 
all idleness is dishonorable; till the effort to get money 
by whatever strategy without furnishing a fair equivalent 
has become dishonorable spoliation and is treated as 
treason against society. It will not be Christian till 
brain and hand count for more than money and position 
in the world's markets; till the maxims of the present 
economic system are reversed and money has become the 
means and men have become the end and the measure 
of all wealth " (Abbott, ibid., pp. 200, 201). 

There are two things growing out of all this, as the 
conclusion of the whole matter, that may be noted : 

The State will become Christian through the use of 
Christian means. By ignoring this principle men have 
gone sadly astray in their thought of the Christian State 
and its coming; by remembering this principle they will 
be saved from much confusion in thought and much 
uncertainty in action. After all that has been said it is 
needless to illustrate this principle in detail ; but one or 
two things may be emphasized in this brief summary. 

For one thing, the State no less than the family and the 
church, has a moral life and attains its ends by moral 
means. They who think of the State as an immoral or a 



440 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

non-moral agency, the machinery and instrument of force 
and compulsion alone, seeking its ends wholly by brute 
strength and physical power, have mistaken a part for 
the whole, and have permitted one aspect of the State's 
action to fill the whole horizon. The State may use 
force and in its least advanced forms it may rely upon 
such means ; but the use of force is at best an incident in 
its life and does not tell the whole story. However it may 
be with primitive and barbarous States, the facts will 
show that the most advanced and civilized States carry 
on their functions with comparatively little use of force. 
The fact is, the position of a State on the line from bar- 
barism to Christianity may be determined by its reliance 
upon compulsion for the furtherance of its aims. The 
fact is also, the best modern States carry on the larger 
part of their activities with little appeal to force. It is 
far within the truth to say that nine-tenths of the State's 
activities are carried on without even the threat of con- 
straint. It is manifest to all that the system of educa- 
tion, the vast charitable and reformatory agencies of 
society, and the hundred and one other interests of the 
modern State rely almost wholly upon moral means for 
their operation and efficiency. The average well-behaved 
citizen in a civilized community, probably not three times 
in his life, ever feels the strong arm of the State ; so far 
as he is concerned the State attains its ends wholly by the 
use of social and moral means. 

The State will increasingly become Christian through 
the increased use of Christian means. It should be 
needless to say, after all that has been said in this study, 
that we do not expect the Christian State to become a 
reality through the use of law and force alone ; but 
lest any one should fail to grasp this principle we empha- 
size it here with all the stress possible. Law has its func- 
tions to fulfil in the economy of life ; this is true of all 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 44I 

law, and it is no less true of civil law. Law in the 
State may imply constraint, but this is not the whole of 
the case. Law has an educational value no less that 
is deserving of more attention than it has received. One 
great purpose of all law is to define and declare what 
is socially right and wrong. Thus it is the standard of 
social judgment and the determiner of the people's con- 
science. " The statute books of a State," says Bishop 
Doane, " are to be not only the expression of the law, 
human and divine, but the education of the people till 
they know the meaning and authority of law. . . The true 
function of civil law is not only to enforce the right, but 
to elevate man to true perceptions of what is right " 
(" The Forum," Feb., 1896). The whole story of the Old 
Testament economy teaches us that law, whether human 
or divine — and the divine law, it may be noted, was civil 
law no less — is a kind of pedagogue leading men unto 
Christ. 

This is not all, but as society becomes more Christian 
and intelligent there will be less and less necessity for 
the use of force, for the reason that public opinion and 
social judgment will become more and more potent. The 
fact is, government in the best communities is government 
by public opinion; what may be called the social judg- 
ment is potent enough for all practical purposes; with 
this public opinion and social judgment becoming ever 
more masterful and intense there will be ever less and 
less need for governmental compulsion. And this means 
that psychical and moral means will become ever more 
potent and dominant in the life of the State, so potent 
and dominant in fact as to make unnecessary an appeal 
to other agencies. All this, it may be said, is in perfect 
accord with the teaching of modern sociology through its 
best interpreters. Thus Professor Ross tells us that " It 
is necessary to regard social phenomena as essentially 



442 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

psychic, and to look for their immediate causes in mind." 
Again, the causes of social action '' are to be sought in 
mental processes, its forces are psychic forces, and no 
ultimate non-psychic factors should be recognized until 
it is shown just how they are able to affect motives and 
choice" ("Foundations of Sociology," pp. 152, 161). 
Thus also Professor Ward shows us in his " Dynamic 
Sociology and the Psychic Factors of Civihzation," 
that the forces operating in society and determining 
man's conduct are primarily psychic and spiritual forces. 
In the last analysis the State, no less than the family and 
the church, is a psychical and spiritual realm and agency. 
As the State becomes more intelligent and Christian it 
will give an ever-increasing attention to its higher and 
positive functions, such as causes and conditions of social 
well-being, and consequently it will find an ever-decreas- 
ing call for the use of its lower and primitive functions, 
such as the purely police and defensive functions. That 
is, as the State becomes more intelligent and Christian 
the police and punitive functions will fall into the back- 
ground and the more Christian aims and characteristics 
will grow and intensify and dominate. And thus, as the 
State becomes more Christian, the appeal to force will be- 
come less and less necessary, for the reason that the 
necessity for its use is less urgent. In fact, as the State 
becomes more Christian, it will seek to make unnecessary 
the use of force at all in its unceasing attention to the 
things which make for true peace and progress. In the 
home, in the best of homes, it is sometimes necessary to 
employ force in order to rescue a child from danger, 
and to use constraint for the child's own good. There is 
probably not a home in the land where the need has 
never arisen for the use of such force and constraint, as 
there is probably not a home in the land where force 
or constraint has never been most usefully employed. 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 443 

But in the home, in the home that is even approximately 
Christian, the aim of the parents is to render the resort 
to force and compulsion wholly unnecessary. No home 
is possible without discipline of some kind ; but the better 
the discipline the less necessity there is for constraint. 
The same principle applies to the State, and for pre- 
cisely the same reasons. In the State that is becoming 
Christian the unceasing aim of the State is — whether 
through the use of compulsion or not — to make unneces- 
sary all appeal to force. The Christian State, like the 
Christian man, the Christian family, and the Christian 
church is a becoming; and it is, therefore, as legitimate 
to speak of the one as of the other, and for precisely 
the same reason. The full comprehension of this principle 
will do much to clarify our thought and to determine our 
action. 

Thus, the Christian State will become a reality through 
the Christian use of Christian methods. In the Christian 
conception of the kingdom of God on earth we have the 
ideal of a human society, a city of God come down to men. 
In the Christian conception of the State we have the idea 
of a human institution that is one of the spheres of 
manifestation of the life of the kingdom and one of 
the agencies for the kingdom's realization in the world. 
And in the Christian conception of the mean > and methods 
of the kingdom we have the emphasis laid u\ on moral and 
spiritual means working through the methods of life and 
growth. The man who cherishes the vision of the city of 
God that comes down to earth is thereby pledged to go out 
into the world and build a city after the divine pattern. 
The man who believes in the divine meaning of the State 
has a divine commission to go out into society and seek 
the divine kingdom through the life of the State. The 
man who possesses the new life of the kingdom, like the 
leaven and the salt, is to live and serve that the life of 



444 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

society may be both sweetened and transformed. The 
people who have a poHtical conscience quickened by the 
Christian spirit will write into civil laws the principles of 
fair dealing and brotherhood that are fundamental in 
Christianity. 

Thus it is evident that in no formal and mechanical way 
do men seek the kingdom of God; not by any arbitrary 
and institutional methods do they use the machinery of 
the civil government. For Christianity is less a mold of 
doctrine than a spirit of life ; it rules men, not by edicts, 
but by inspirations. It conquers the world, not by force 
of arms, but by the power of the Spirit. Jesus did not 
come to give men a code of laws, but an ideal of life. 
He did not come to found an institution, but to give men 
a new spirit. The State, it follows, becomes Christian, 
not by the insertion of the name of Christ in the consti- 
tution or by the enactment into statutes of the Sermon on 
the Mount. The State, it is evident, becomes Christian 
rather by the infusing of the Christian spirit into all the 
relations of life and the gradual transformation of so- 
ciety into the ideal of Christ. On the walls of the Palace 
of the Signoria, in Florence, is an inscription, placed 
there some four hundred years ago by the Mayor Niccolo 
Capprivi, which records how in the city council and after- 
ward in the public assembly, the people of Florence 
solemnly elected Jesus Christ king of the city, and 
pledged themselves to be loyal to him. 

Jesus 
Christus Rex Gloriae, venit in pace; 
Christus vincit; Christus regnat; 

Christus imperat; 
Christus ah omni malo nos defendat. 

That was a purely formal transaction, and as history 
shows, availed little. The mere insertion of the name of 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 445 

Christ in the constitution, the formal acknowledgment of 
his kingship, the recognition of his authority by some 
popular vote, may tell us something about the life of a 
people, but these things are not sufficient to create the 
Christian State. The kingdoms of this world become the 
kingdom of our God by the realization of the life of 
the kingdom in the life of the State and the transfor- 
mation of the institutions of the State into the kingdom 
of God. The Christian spirit must create the Christian 
State. The Christian State is only a matter of time and 
patience. 

The practice of citizenship is the highest expression 
of the Christian life and the best preparation for the 
future. According to the oldest tradition of our race man 
began his career in a garden as an isolated individual, 
with only the woman at first to share his fortunes. Ac- 
cording to the closing chapter of Revelation, humanity 
culminates its course in a city, with its myriads of in- 
habitants, wherein men live together in solidarity and 
peace. This may mean many things, but only one or two 
things may be noted here. Heaven is pictured as a city, 
and so it follows that man's preparation for heaven is 
preparation for life in a city. Here on earth man is a 
member of society, and this means that the practice of 
citizenship in an earthly society is the best preparation 
that man can make for life in heaven. That this is so is 
shown in several ways. 

In the quality of the ideal that one seeks in and 
through the State we can measure the height of his 
apprehension of the ideal of Christ. The ideal of Christ, 
the kingdom of God on earth, is a comprehensive and 
universal ideal, as wide as the nature of man, and as 
all-inclusive as the purpose of God. One man construes 
the Christian ideal in personal terms ; another widens it 
to the dimensions of a church ; a third conceives it as a 



44^ THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

restful life in some other world j and so the story runs 
through all the scale. In the most real sense the quality 
and breadth of a man's vision are shown in the ideal that 
he seeks in and through his actual social Hfe. Again, 
the quality of a man's faith is revealed in his vision of 
the ideal and his devotion to it. " Faith," says George 
Matheson, '' is a moral aspiration ; it is the sight of an 
ideal and the steadfast loyalty to that ideal in daily life." 
" To see the kingdom of God is to be already in possession 
of that kingdom, for it is only seen by that spiritual 
similarity which enables kindred minds to recognize 
each other's powers " (" Landmarks of N. T. Morality," 
p. io6). To be justified by faith, is to see the ideal, and 
to believe that it is the only thing worth following. Thus 
in the way that a man seeks the ideal of Christ does he 
show the real nature of his faith and declare that he is 
living a justified life. The man who is fully justified 
by faith is the man who has a vision for his whole 
life and has dedicated himself with all his powers to the 
ideal of the kingdom. 

Then, in the way that a man takes thought for others 
and serves the common life does he show the reality 
of his Christian profession. The Christian life is a life 
of service; to bear one another's burdens is to fulfil the 
law of Christ; and to sanctify one's self for the sake of 
others is the very spirit of Christ. The State, we have 
learned, is the medium of the mutual sacrifices and 
services of the people ; it is the one agency through which 
all the people can co-operate in their search for justice; 
it is, in fine, the most potent and masterful organization of 
man's social life. Thus the man who would serve in his 
day and generation will serve the State of which he is a 
member. Thus the good man is the good citizen, and the 
bad citizen cannot be a good man. The practice of 
citizenship is the flower and fruitage of a man's spiritual 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 447 

life; one may be called a good man in so far as he plays 
the citizen and lives for the common good. The man 
who believes in the kingdom of God has a vision of a 
holy city ; that is, he has a vision of what a city — his city 
— ought to be. He is hence called to go out into the city 
where he dwells and build on earth a city after the model 
of the city in the skies. He is to do what in him lies to 
cast out of the cities of earth — out of his own city — the 
things that offend, that work abomination and that make 
a lie. He is moved to put his life in pledge in behalf of 
a city where no one is wronged or trodden under foot, 
where straight paths are made for men's feet and all 
stumbling-blocks are taken out of the way, a city where 
all have access to the Tree of Life and all are partakers 
of its fruits. The man who does this shows that he is a 
citizen of the kingdom and is an heir of eternal life ; the 
man who neglects these things shows that he is yet in the 
gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity, and he has 
no reason to suppose that he shall ever stand within the 
pearly gates. The man who hopes to live in the city of 
God when time shall be no more, for the present at least, 
must learn to Hve his deepest and truest life amid the 
masterful organizations of the social order and to find the 
witness of his sonship in his concern for the common 
welfare. Heaven is a city, and the best preparation for 
heaven is the practice of citizenship. Thus each man who 
believes in the kingdom of God and has the vision of a 
city of God, just where he is must seek that kingdom. 
Each man where he is must learn to live in such a way 
that if all other men lived as he lives, the kingdom of God 
would be fully come. The Christian life is a life of serv- 
ice. In the long run the color and quality of a man's 
social relations are the infallible tests of his faith in God 
and his love for Christ. 

Finally, in the light of all this, we see the meaning of 



448 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

man's social and political life. The life of man and his 
progress, the relations of man with man in society, these 
are the real and vital things, and all other matters are 
but symbols and appearances. Questions of rights and 
liberties, problems of money and trade, all have a vast 
and vital interest because of their relation to man and 
his social welfare. They, the politicians and materialists, 
who see in these questions and problems nothing more 
than the superficial things, such as rights and liberties, 
money and trade, mistake shadows for substance and miss 
the whole meaning of life. But they, the seers and 
statesmen, who go behind these superficial things and con- 
sider men and the relations which underlie them all, and 
who view these objective things in the light of their 
human and spiritual meaning, see that all things have a 
divine and spiritual value. The Christian who looks out 
upon the great world of man's social and political life, 
and sees in it nothing more and higher than the mere 
struggle of men for honors and possessions, is blind 
and does not know the real meaning of his religion. 

In the light of the Christian conception of things, the 
world of politics is not by any means the secular and 
vulgar world that men have supposed. The fact is, the 
man who looks upon politics in this way shows thereby 
that he is himself a vulgar and unspiritual man. In the 
light of the Christian conception of things, what we call 
politics in their inner nature are essentially moral and 
spiritual. The fact is, human relations, whether in the 
home, the church, or in the State, are the fundamental 
realities and underlie all such things as trade and money ; 
these human relations are essentially spiritual, and there 
is no difference in sanctity between what we call church 
relations and political relations. The State, no less than 
the church and the family, is a medium through which 
man holds communion with God and fulfils his purpose. 



THE REALIZATION OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE 44Q 

and the State equally with the church and the family is 
a means through which the life of God is getting itself 
reborn into the life of humanity. The State no less than 
the family and the church is a moral and spiritual insti- 
tution, and what are called social and political questions 
are at heart moral and spiritual questions. In the world, 
as nowhere else, in the world of politics more than any- 
where else, men show what manner of men they are and 
prove the reality of their Christian faith. In their daily 
life — and in their political life in the fullest degree — the 
real religion of a people is expressed and realized. Their 
political institutions are the best definition of a nation's 
faith. Custom is sentiment that has become habitual. 
Civilization is simply applied conscience. Their laws are 
a people's interpretations of the Golden Rule. In their 
political life we have the highest expression of a people's 
religion, and in their practice of citizenship we read 
men's fitness for life in the city of God. 

It may be many long generations before the political 
State is fully Christian and the kingdom of God is fully 
come. It may be, indeed, that the men who confess the 
faith we have suggested may be set down as dreamers 
and may receive scant respect in this present generation. 
But it is well for us to remember that the ideals and 
dreams of yesterday have become the commonplace 
actualities of to-day. And it may be well to remember 
also that the men for whom the future has no promise are 
the men who have no ideal ; the man who has no ideal is 
a dead soul and already is living in the outer dark- 
ness. It may be a misfortune to have an ideal that is im- 
possible; it may bring on one the scorn of the world to 
follow the ideal of Christ in the political world ; 1)ut it is a 
fatal sin to have no ideal at all ; and it is treason against 
the Christ to have his ideal, and yet deem it impracticable. 
The hope of a Christian State in this present world is vain 

2D 



I 



450 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 

and Utopian ? It may be so to those who have no faith ; 
but to the man who beheves in God and is wilHng to 
serve in his generation it ought to be the most certain 
thing in the world. 

: " I understand ; you speak of that city of which we are 
the founders, and which exists in idea only ; for I do not 
think that there is such an one anywhere on earth? 

" In heaven, I repHed, there is laid up a pattern of such 
a city, and he who desires may behold this, and beholding, 
govern himself accordingly. But whether there really is 
or ever will be such an one is of no importance to him ; 
for he will act according to the law of that city and no 
other. 

" True, he said" (Plato, " The Republic," Bk. IX, sec. 

592). 



INDEX 



Abbott, Lyman: defines rights of 
man, 225; describes modern com- 
mercial kings, 22-] ■, quoted on the 
State fully Christian, 439. 

Adams, Henry C, shows the rela- 
tion of the State to industry, 393. 

Adler, Felix, quoted on reign of 
mammonism, 395. 

Aggression by monopoly control, 228. 

Agnostic theory of the State de- 
fined, 212. 

Amendment to the Constitution, 140. 

Amiel, Henri F., fears for demo- 
cratic society, 212. 

Anabaptists: contended for liberty of 
conscience, 274; led by Hiibmaier 
and Denck, 130; wanted a social 
reformation, 130. 

Anarchists: their ideal of the State, 
80; divided into two groups, revo- 
lutionary and philosophical, 80 f. 

Anarchy: a mission of, 81; not alD- 
sence of all association, 84. 

Andrews, E. Benj., gives objections 
to Socialism, 96. 

Apocalypse of St. John: is a po- 
litical vision, 410; describes in 
outline a holy city, 256. 

Aristocratic elements in society nec- 
essary, 107. 

Aristocratic views of human nature 
given, 346. 

Aristocracy: defined, 106; is non- 
progressive, 107; is necessary 
>yhere true, 107. 

Aristotle: declares that man is a 
political being, 23; defines the 
nature of the State, 65; discusses 
democratic government, 116; ex- 
plains the objects of the State, 
16, 30; gives history of demo- 
cratic experiments, 186; shows 
that virtue is concern of the 
State, 56. 

Arnold, Matthew: believes in democ- 
racy, 156; considers chief value of 
democracy, 168. 

Arnold, Thomas: criticizes Constan- 
tine and his influence, 268; de- 
fines relation of Church and State, 
282; gives definition of the church, 
408. 

Augustine, declares that Christianity 
is as old as creation, 144. 

Babylonian captivity, as affecting 
Israel, 260. 



Bakunin, Michale, states the mission 
of anarchy, 81. 

Bancroft, George: describes May- 
flower compact, 134; praises Roger 
Williams, 136. 

Baptists: contend for freedom of 
conscience, 274; in Virginia and 
Massachusetts plead for liberty, 
277 f. 

Bascora, John, asks that State shall 
protect all its members, 385 f. 

Batten, S. Z. : defines politics as 
science of social welfare, 16; 
quoted on " The Redemption of 
the Unfit," 352. 

Bax, Balfort: discusses influence of 
guilds, 121; shows that Reforma- 
tion was a social revolt, 252. 

Beaulieu, Leroy: asks that State con- 
cern itself with human conditions, 
62; defines the conception of the 
State, 18; shows that the State 
is not inventive, 65. 

Beginnings of democracy, considered 
in Chap. V'l. 

Blackie, John Stuart quoted on the 
teaching of history, 257. 

Blackstone's conception of law, 214. 

Bluntschli, J. K.: considers re- 
lation of Church and State, 258; 
criticizes the social contract, 48; 
defines ideal of aristocracy, 106; 
describes the State, 23; discusses 
theocracy in Israel, 103; finds that 
force is not origin of the State, 42; 
finds origin of State in natural 
sociability of man, 48 f; gives 
characteristics of all States, 19; 
quoted on the necessity of the 
State, 7-]\ shows true end of the 
State, 65. 

Boardman, George Dana, criticizes 
alliance of Church and State, 268. 

Boniface VIII, asserts papal sover- 
eignty, 26^. 

Borgeaud, Charles: describes Inde- 
pendents of England, 133; ex- 
plains " The Agreement of the 
People of England." 133. 

Bosanquet, Bernard, discusses So- 
cialism ancient and modern, 95. 

Boss, a menace in political life, 193?. 

Bossism, defeats democracy, ygs. 

Brierley, J., says that society makes 
criminals, 368 f. 

Brinton, D. G.. finds culture is only 
possible in the group, 90. 



452 



INDEX 



Brooks, J. G., praises labor unions, 

250- 

Brotherhood: as related to democ- 
racy, 143; in social and political 
life, 376 f. 

Brown, C. R., quoted on microbes as 
teachers of brotherhood, 179. 

Browning, Robert, was a universal 
poet, 154. 

Brownson, O. A., quoted on freedom 
of denial, 218. 

Bryce, James: defines civil and 
church power, 268; describes pub- 
lic opinion, 202; explains bene- 
fits of organization, 230; fears 
possible decay of religion, 325; 
shows results of union of Church 
and State, 284. 

Bundschuh, The League of, appears, 
127. 

Bunyan, John, service of, in " Pil- 
grim's Progress," 13. 

Burke, Edmund: finds civil society 
necessary to man, 89; has a high 
conception of the State, 31. 

Burns, Robert, poet of the people, 
151. 

Calvin, John : _ endeavors to estab- 
lish a Christian commonwealth, 
2T2; gave the State a theological 
basis, 423. 

Capitalism, controls modern society, 

^ 395- 

Carlyle, Thomas: calls economics the 
dismal science, 395 f; declares uni- 
verse built on moral principles, 
213; praises the man of letters, 
148. 

Catholic Church, as allied with civil 
power, 124. 

Causes of disease and crime to be 
studied, 75 f. 

Channing, W. E., declares the State 
is non-Christian, 86. 

Checks and balances, in American 
Constitution, 238. 

Child labor, a modern problem, 342 f. 

Childhood, to be protected, 73. 

Christian Church: has a great work, 
418; considered in its origin, 262 
f; and State considered in Chap. 
XL 

Christian family, a reality, 417. 

Christian ideal, sets men great tasks, 
'419. 

Christian men: are to serve in the 
State, 443; called to make Chris- 
tian State, 427. 

Christian spirit: a determining factor 
in life, 429; is _ all pervasive, 
428; is at work in society, 432, 
368; has certain characteristics, 
408. 

Christian society, is not institutional, 

425. 
Christian State: defined, 421; con- 
sidered in Chap. XI; is a growing 
reality, 407; throws emphasis upon 
moral means, 443. 



Christian virtues, essentially social, 
416. 

Christianity: a dominant factor in 
life, 10; creates problems in democ- 
racy, 328; has certain essential 
ideas, 322; is essentially demo- 
cratic, 147; is the greatest social 
force, 321 f ; often misunderstood 
by many, 40; has new social tasks, 
419; must dominate all life, 420. 

Church: defined as the Household ot 
Faith, 20; in early times hostile to 
State, 265; established, not de- 
sirable, 284; has a social meaning, 
21; its formation described, 261. 

Church and State: among the Jews, 
259; among Semitic peoples, 258; 
medieval conception of, 268; in 
India, Persia, and Rome, 286 f; 
efforts to unite, 270; considered 
in possible relations, 280; efforts 
to separate, 269 f ; must not be 
united, 282; not satisfactory with 
either in subordination, 281; have 
certain right relations, 291 f ; sep- 
arated in New England, 269. 

Citizen: must prove his faith in 
civic service, 447; with the Chris- 
tian spirit, 428. 

Citizenship: is highest expression of 
Christian life, 445 ; when incom- 
petent a peril, 187; proves reality 
of one's religion, 445. 

Clarke, J. B., on the rule of knight- 
hood in society, 71. 

Classification, of States, loi f. 

Climatic conditions to be conserved 
by State, 62. 

Competition, may be regulated by 
the State, 71 f. 

Conditions: general conditions of 
life, 61; industrial should be care 
of State, 63; of a good life for all, 
379 f ; may be improved by State 
action, 382. 

Confucius, confesses failure to save 
men, 316. 

Confusion, in view of social changes, 
II. 

Conquest, as a theory of State's 
origin, 40 f. 

Conscience, will become Christian, 

^ 435- 

Constantine, his conversion and in- 
fluence, 267. 

Constitution of the L^nited States: 
its checks and balances, 238; Pre- 
amble of. quoted, 57; Amended by 
Article X\\ 

Constitutional Convention, in Phila- 
delphia, 139. 

Cook. Joseph, quoted on public du- 
ties of man, 333. 

Cooley, C. H., contends that ideal 
should be organic^ 359. 

Corruption in politics, a menace, 

334- 
Criminals: harshly treated in the 
past, 367 f ; to be reformed by 
social action, 369. 



INDEX 



453 



Dangers of democracy, considered, 
185 f. 

Davidson, quoted on Church and 
State in Israel, 259. 

Declaration of Independence, 
adopted, 139. 

De_ Coulanges, Foustel: finds that 
State is founded on religion, 102; 
shows that religion constituted 
family, 294. 

Defensive functions of the State, 
named, 58 f. 

De Laveleye: demands social oppor- 
tunity for all in democracy, 353; 
quoted on divine order of hu- 
man society, 399 f. 

Democracy: its advantages con- 
sidered, 166 f ; a matter of 
habitual practice, 254; a world- 
wide movement, 9; a confession 
of the equality of men, 167; a 
confession of confidence in man, 
178; a confession of human 
brotherhood, 253; at last appears 
in fact, 136; is described by 
Herodotus, loi; considers the in- 
terests of all, 1 80; creates some 
special tasks, 393 ; demands a pub- 
lic spirit, 333; depends upon grow- 
ing conception of brotherhood, 
143; drift toward, considered, 
142 f ; foregleams of, in history 
and literature, 116; has its in- 
spiration in Christianity, 147; has 
some great fundamental ideas, 
243; has various forms, 108; has 
personal advantages, 106 f ; has 
some social benefits, 175; has 
some political advantages, 180 f ; 
implies mutual responsibilities, 
181; in its primary affirmation, 
167; is feared by many, 237; is 
becoming a fact, 216; is inevitable 
where _ Christianity is regnant, 
165; is training men in citizen- 
ship, 170 f ; its beginnings con- 
sidered, 115 f ; is moving in line 
of God's purpose, 164; gathers 
momentum as its grows, 160; 
means organized self-control, 215; 
means freedom of self-expression, 
173; must become positive, 244; 
must become a people's govern- 
ment, 247; must become industrial 
and social, 249 f; needs the Chris- 
tian religion, 323; not esteemed 
highly by Aristotle, 109; of all 
life is next step, 243; opens door 
to highest station, 182; unfinished 
tasks of democracy considered, 
216 f ; various aspects of demo- 
cratic drift. III f . 

Demagogue: described by Aristotle, 
190; is a peril in a democracy, 

^ 191- 

Denck, a leader of tlio Anabaptists, 

^ '3'; 

Dennis, James S., quoted on power 

of Christianity, 319. 
De Tocqueville, declares that gov- 



ernments neglected will degener- 
ate, 329. 

Devine, E. T., quoted on new crimi- 
nology, 370. 

Differences among men, noted, 380. 

Direct legislation, by the people, 22,7. 

Direct nomination of candidates, 
242. 

Disinherited, The: a modern prob- 
lem, 339; handicapped by adverse 
conditions, 382 f; not here in the 
will of God, 387. 

Dismal science, denounced by Car- 
.lyle, 395- 

Distrust of democracy, common, 

Edersheim, Alfred: on Israel's repu- 
diation of divine king, ^,7. 

Education: to be promoted by the 
State, "]},•, greatly promotes democ- 
racy, 157; not adequate to-day, 

343- 
Eliot, George, had democratic spirit, 

156. 
Elliott, Ebeiiezer, quoted, 114. 
Ely, Prof. R. T., defines Socialism, 

93- 
Emerson, R. W., sings of freedom, 

155- 
Environment, a potent factor in life, 
380. 

Fairbairn, A. M. : declares democ- 
racy is Christian in origin, 141; 
finds essence of Christianity is a 
human society, 317; quoted on 
breadth of salvation, 414. 

Family: its origin and meaning, 20; 
its relation to the Church and 
State, 19 f. 

Fichte, quoted on Christianity in 
State, 399. 

Fiske, John, claims American his- 
tory begins in Germany, 119. 

Fitness, shown in a democracy, 183. 

Fremantle, W. H.: declares man's 
work is to found a Christian State, 
256; quoted in influence of Chris- 
tianity in State, 399. 

Functions of the State: considered, 
54 f; nature of, 56 f; positive and 
negative considered, tt. 

Gallon, Francis, describes genius in 

Greek States, 117. 
Germanic peoples, were democratic, 

."9- 

Gibbon, Edward, on the conversion 
of Constantinc, 267. 

Giddings, F. II., quoted on decay 
of republican institutions, 217. 

Gilman, N. P., on American govern- 
ment versus Socialism. 180. 

(iodkin, E. L., on real problems of 
dcmocrncy, 331. 

(jold, to be placed under foot, 307. 

Cjolden Rule, in politics, 429. 

Government, has been distrusted, 
246. 



454 



INDEX 



Great Charter, 120. 

Green, Thos. H., on the limits of 
freedom, zt. 

Guilds, prepared men for democ- 
racy, 121. 

Guizot, defines power of English 
Parliament, 120. 

Hall, G. Stanley, on society making 
criminals, 368. 

Harrison, Frederic, on need of so- 
cial ideal, 305. 

Heath, Richard, on social side of 
German Reformation, 252. 

Heaven, pictured in Apocalypse as a 
city, 447- 

Hegel: claims State is not based 
upon force, 43; explains will of 
God is relation to State, 52. 

Hobson, John, hopes progress will 
become rational, 256. 

Hodges, George, defines causes of 
modern age, 157. 

Hooker, suggests social contract 
theory, 43. 

Hosmer, on the coming up of the 
serfs, 120. 

Howerth, quoted on power of capi- 
talism, 226. 

Human nature, a constant quality, 
380. 

Huxley: deplores conditions of 
modern society, 91; gives defini- 
tion of anarchy, 80; shows that 
anarchy is impossible, 85. 

Ideal of the State: considered, 79 f; 
needed in modern society, 79; and 
religion, 303. 

Idealists, only effective realists, 304. 

Individual initiative: versus State 
action, 65; narrowing, 233. 

Individualistic type of State, de- 
scribed, 85 f. 

Industrial forces, now controlled by 
few, zzj. 

Inheritance: for each to be secured 
in society, 247; to be made possi- 
ble for all, 386 f. 

Initiative and referendum, needed, 
241. 

Injustice in society, defined, 373-. 

Intemperance, a scripts problem in 
democracy, 337. 

Interests of men often in conflict, 68. 

Israel, an illustration of theocracy, 
102. 

Jellinek: declares democracy _ of 
Christian origin, 114; finds idea 
of rights of religious origin, 123; 
pays tribute to Roger Williams, 
277; shows why democracy never 
applied in England, 134. 

Jesus of Nazareth: gives idea of the 
kingdom of God, 410; his life 
guarantee of equality, 146; his life 
shows worth of man, 145; rules 
world by his ideal, 306; teaches 
God's Fatherhood, 146. 



John, king of England, objects to 
Magna Charta, 161. 

Jones, Henry, quoted on solidarity, 
176. 

Jones, R. M. : on the individual and 
society, 32; shows man is a social 
being, 412. 

Jones, S. M., on men's life princi- 
ples, 332. 

JosephuSj on theocracy, 102. 

Jubilee, its law of release, 390. 

Judson, H. P., quoted on democracy, 

215- 

Justice: IS a grownig thmg, 372; 
must be established by social ac- 
tion, 375 ; to be administered with a 
saving purpose, 367 f; to be main- 
tained throughout society, 371 f. 

Justification by faith, a potent idea, 
128. 

Keys, the power of in papal claims, 
269. 

Kidd, Benj.: deplores inequalities in 
society, 355; discusses education 
in Greek States, 157; on influence 
oif religion upon social movements, 
294; shows potency of religion in 
social progress, 320 f. 

King, H. C, on the just man, 417, 

Kingdom of God: a fundamental 
idea in Christianity, 287; has been 
variously defined, 405, 409 f ; is 
a great political ideal, 308, 398; 
is an ideal becoming real, 299. 

Kingdoms based on force, not per- 
manent, 430. 

Kingship of Jesus, defined, 426. 

Kirkup, defines Socialism, 92. 

Kropotkin: finds some forms of as- 
sociation everywhere, 85 ; tells Avhy 
men are always found in societies, 
46 f. 

Labor unions, are necessary, 250. 

Labriola, on economic structure of 
society, 93. 

Law: has an educational value, 441; 
nature of civil law, 2^ f. 

Leadership, often false in a democ- 
racy, 189. 

Lecky, W. E. H.: names achieve- 
ments of Greek peoples, 117; sees 
danger in plutocracy, 336. 

Liberty: in its nay and yea, 218; im- 
plies self;Sacrifice, 219; must be- 
come positive, 220 f. 

Lieber, Francis: considers the influ- 
ence of the State, 16; describes 
political parties, 197. 

Life, is organic and organific, 431, 
434. 

Lilly, W. S.: declares that knowl- 
edge is not sufficient. 320; finds 
Socialism hard to define, 92; dis- 
counts social contract theory, 212; 
on the theory of conquest, 42; on 
the influence of religion, 304; on 
the duty of the State to maintain 
proper conditions, 74. 



INDEX 



455 



Lincoln, Abraham, defines democ- 
racy, no. 

Literary men, a prophetic order, 148. 

Lloyd, Henry D. : declares monopoly 
prices are a ransom, 230; on the 
growth of conscience, 321. 

Locke: on a speech of King James, 
43; defines the end of government, 
72. 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, quoted on com- 
pulsory secularism, 296. 

London, and its many poor, 340. 

Lotze, quoted on influence of guilds, 

121. 

Love and brotherhood: in society, 
376 f; is a universal law, 377. 

Lowell, James R. : quoted, 435; was 
a poet of democracy, 154. 

Luther, Martin : demands social free- 
dom, 130; his doctrines defined, 
128; never became fully democratic, 
272; tries to suppress Anabaptists, 
131- 

Macaulay, Thomas B. : essay of, on 
Von Ranke, 252; foresees peril in 
democracy, 191. 

MacMaster, quoted on State consti- 
tutions, 162. 

Mackenzie, quotes an English judge, 
368. 

Mackenzie, J. S., on person and so- 
ciety, 413. 

Madison, President: defends the 
Baptists, 2Tj; offers First Amend- 
ment to Constitution, 279. 

Maine, Sir Henry: defines patri- 
archal theory of State, 37; on 
America's influence on world, 

163. 

Majority may override minority, 

204. 

Making men good by law, 366. 

Man: appraised highly by democ- 
racy, 394; is more than wealth, 

397. , , . 

Martensen, Bishop: on the relation 
of Church and State, 283; on 
metapolitical element in Chris- 
tianity, 303; quoted on power of 
Christianity in society, 417. 

Martineau, James, on God as the 
supreme ideal, 306. 

Mazzini, Joseph: a prophet of de- 
mocracy, 169; considers problems 
of democracy, 357; declares So- 
cialism is materialistic, 97; his 
characterization of the family, 20; 
on the harmony of conflicting in- 
terests, 312; regards "utility" no 
real motive, 315; wants best peo- 
ple to govern, 182. 

Mill, J. S. : declares that society 
fosters selfishness, 337; fears 
tyranny of multitude, 204; gives 
definition of liberty, 87; on in- 
fluence of machinery, 354; says 
justice not known to-day, 356. 

Moral life of people, the concern of 
State, 76. 



Morality, realized in social relations, 

Morley, John, thinks world can be 

made better, 385. 
Masson, honors Baptists, 274. 
Matheson, George, defines faith, 426, 

446. 
Metapolitical element necessary, 

307. 
Mob mind, in a democracy, 206 f. 
Monarchy: as form of government, 

104; in Great Britain is limited, 

105. 
Monopoly control, in modern world, 

226. 
Moss, Lemuel, states law of unity, 

Motley, on early Germans, 119- 

Mulford, Elisha: on patriarchal 
theory, 40; on law of humanity 
in State, 430. 

Miiller, Max, finds no people with- 
out government, 17, 46. 

Multitude, may become a tyranny, 
210. 

Munger, Theo., quoted on jubilee 
law, 390. 

Mutual responsibilities, in a democ- 
racy, 181. 

Napoleon, opened career for talent, 

175- 

Nash, Henry S. : defines tasks of 
Christianity to-day, 420; says peo- 
ple rule by divine right, 165. 

Natural society, as theory of State, 
48. 

New York City, and its poor, 341. 

Obstacles, to human well-being, T2. 

Opportunity: to be guaranteed to all, 
374; should be provided in infi- 
nite variety, 384 f. 

Origen, on conception of Church 
and State, 266. 

Parliament, the power of, in Britain, 
106. 

Parties: are necessary in free States, 
198; keep good men out of office, 
240; may become a gross tyranny, 
200; often defeat popular govern- 
ment, 239; suppress personal in- 
dependence, 330. 

Party system, a danger in democ- 
racy, 196. 

Party spirit, may be a danger, 199. 

Paternal type of society, 97. 

Paul the Apostle: defines religious 
liberty, 219; honors civil rulers, 
56. 

Peasants: revolt in Germany, 130; 
struggle of, for liberty, 271; 
twelve articles by, quoted, 130. 

Peel, Sir Robert, defines public opin- 
ion, 201, 

Perfection of man, considered, 411 f. 

Pericles, oration of, over Athe- 
nians, quoted, 31. 

Phillips, Wendell: believed in democ- 



456 



INDEX 



racy, 172; would give vote to all 
men, 178. 

Philosophy, art of thinking things 
together, 10. 

Piers the Plowman, represents 
Christ among men, 150. 

Pilgrims, more tolerant than Puri- 
tans, 273. 

Plato: explains origin of the State, 
250; quoted on ideal city, 450. 

Plutarch: found no State without re- 
ligion, 326; explains origin of 
State, 40; quotes Alexander on 
brotherhood, 143. 

Politics: one of the highest arts, 
208; has a moral and religious 
meaning, 448. 

Political parties, lack ideals, 362. 

Political corruption, of various 
kinds, 334 f. 

Pressure, against things hurtful, 

363. 

Priesthood, of all believers, 128. 
Printing-press, promotes democracy, 

159- 

Problems of the modern State :_ con- 
sidered, 327 f; new, ever-arising, 
327; social, must be solved, 357. 

Process, carried forward in world, 
100, 

Programme: of a Christian society 
discussed, 360 f ; may be good but 
tentative, 434; of social action 
often lacking, 398. 

Promotive functions of the State, 
T2 f. 

Prophetic hope of Israel, was social, 

363- 

Proudhon, gives definition of Social- 
ism, 92. 

Psychic forces in human society, 
classified, 316. 

Public opinion: described by Bryce, 
202; will become more potent, 

441. 

Public service, a problem, 329. 

Punishment, not vindictive but re- 
formatory, 369. 

Puritans: sought to found a Chris- 
tian society, 99; in New England, 

Ratzenhofer, classifies interests of 
men, 68. 

Rauschenbusch, Walter: mentioned, 
378; quoted on perfection of so- 
ciety, 400. 

Realization of the Christian State, 
402 f. 

Reformation: a general movement, 
123; causes of Protestant, 271; 
early movements of, 270; was 
social as much as religious, 124 f. 

Reforms, not isolated but interre- 
lated, 358. 

Relations: to be defined and safe- 
guarded, 28; the sum of human 
life, 26. 

Religion: basis of civil society, 294; 
Christian, a social gospel, 302; 



defined by various writers, 297; 
furnishes supreme standard, 310; 
is expressed in social life, 326; 
harmonizes conflicting interests, 
311; is the real potency of democ- 
racy, 324; ideas of Christianity 
in, 319; incites men to combat 
evils, 321; is all-pervasive, 318; 
its nature and functions, 297; its 
ideal guide of statesmen, 309; 
mistaken views of, 295, 301; on 
the decay of, 325; relates to all 
life, 300; seeks social expression, 
298; social forces of Christian, 
312. 

Religions of world, in competition, 
420. 

Renaissance, a social awakening, 
122. 

Resources of society, in trust for all, 

389. . , . 

Revolution, American, and issues in- 
volved, 230. 

Rhode Island Colony: democratic, 
137; influences other colonies, 138. 

Rights and duties, referred to, 27 \ 
new battle for former, 236. 

Ritchie: his criticism of social con- 
tract, 46; on prevention of waste, 
66, 89. 

Ritschl, on Christian life in commu- 
nity, 414. 

Rome's contribution to democracy, 
118. 

Ross, E. A. : asks that unfit be al- 
lowed to perish, 350; claims force 
is origin_ of State, 40; describes 
"mob mind," 206; names various 
interests of men, 69; quoted on 
psychic forces of society, 442 ; says 
forces of society are psychic, 314. 

Rothe, declares Christianity is es- 
sentially political, 256. 

Rousseau: describes social contract, 
44 f; influence of his theory, 306; 
popularized by Burns, 151. 

Royce, Josiah, declares association 
necessary to man, 24. 

Ruskin, John: an English reformer 
and critic; finds government good 
where good men govern, 112; on 
the manufacture of souls, 78; on 
the true wealth of man, 309; 
quoted on England's epitaph, 396. 

Russia, moving toward democracy, 
163. 

Sacrifice, at basis of society, 320. 

Salvation, includes whole life, 412. 

Schaeffle, quoted on essence of So- 
cialism, 94. 

Schools, insure democracy, 158. 

Scriptures, chief cause of Reforma- 
tion, 127, 129. 

Scudder, Vida, quoted on democracy 
in Britain, 149- 

Seeley, J. R. : finds religion creating 
States, 319, 422; quoted on power 
of religion, 114, 294. 

Self-help a partial truth, 391. 



INDEX 



457 



Sefvice in society, test of religion, 
446. 

Shaftesbury, Earl of, his efforts in 
behalf of children, 31, 60. 

Shelley, was poet of democracy, 153. 

Simon, Jules, says State should pre- 
pare for own decease, 88. 

Sin, in essence, is selfishness, 222. 

Slums, a serious problem, 342. 

Small, A. W.: claims that State fur- 
thers progress, 114; defines the 
State, 34; deplores rule of capital- 
ism, 395 ; explains conflicting in- 
terests of men, 69; illustrates so- 
cializing function of State, 66; 
names spiritual forces in society, 
315; says capitalism is in control, 
226; on moral meaning of social 
process, 55. 

Smith, Eugene, defines new pe- 
nology, 370. 

Smith, Geo. Adam, on character of 
God, 426. 

Smith, W. R.: describes theocracy 
in Israel, 103; describes rise of 
conception of church, 260; on re- 
ligion among Semites, 36; on 
Church and State in ancient 
world, 259. 

Social action must supplement self- 
help, 393. ^ , 

Social contract theory: defined and 
criticized, 43 f, 123 f; is aban- 
doned by all thinkers, 211; is 
working theory of many people, 
211. 

Social control, of industry, 235. 

Social forces: are psychic and spirit- 
ual, 316; defined and classified, 

313- 

Social heritage, not fairly appor- 
tioned, 355. 

Social problem, is modern, 352. 

Social self-consciousness, finding ex- 
pression, no. 

Social tyranny, defined, 22^. 

Socialism: defined, 91 f ; some ob- 
jections to, considered, 96 f. 

Socialistic indictment: is just, 95; 
type of society considered by, 90 f. 

Society: aims of a Christian, 360 f; 
is becoming Christian, 436 f. 

Solidarity: of the world and of man- 
kind, so; is real in modern so- 
ciety, 176. 

Spencer, Herbert: claims State must 
prepare for decease, tj; declares 
that government is immoral, 87; 
defines State as committee of 
management, 29; shows advan- 
tages of association, 86; protests 
against modern " charity," 350. 

State: a universal phenomenon, 17; 
an agency in warfare against 
evil, 364; as a jural society, 29; 
as an economic society, 30; can it 
become Christian? 404 f ; domi- 
nant fact in life, 9; false concep- 
tions of the State, 210; forms of 
the State, 100 f ; functions of, 



^2 f ; has it a right to be? 
12; has a great mission, 399; 
has a moral life, 439; how related 
to man's perfection? 415; is be- 
coming Christian, 437; nature of, 
considered, 17 f ; political organ- 
ization of people, 19; organ of 
political consciousness, 23; insti- 
tute of right relations, 25 ; part- 
nership in all good, 29; realiza- 
tion of man's rational life, 32; 
necessary to man's perfection, 
415; origin of, 35 f ; may have 
Christian spirit, 408; must as- 
sume new functions, 14; will de- 
pend less upon force, 440. 

State and its religion, 294 f. 

State, democracy, and Christianity 
correlated, 402. 

Stickney, quoted on representative 
government, 239. 

Struggle for existence, discussed, 
348. 

Supreme Court of United States, on 
object of State, 16. 

Switzerland, a democratic State, 
108. 

Tennyson, Alfred, protests against 
caste, 153. 

Theocracy: defined by Josephus, 
102; an attempt to explain origin 
of State, 102 f. 

Theology, not basis of Christian so- 
ciety, 424. 

Thirlwall, on Aristotle s use of 
democracy, 117. 

Tolstoy: declares that State is un- 
christian, 82; his doctrine of no 
State defined, 82 f; quoted on 
State tyranny, 40. 

Unfit, The: if preserved become a 
menace, 349; in society create a 
problem, 347; must be considered 
and helped, 75; must be trans- 
formed into fit, 351. 

Vedder, H. C, quoted on life of 
Hiibmaier, 130. 

Vice, to be made hazardous and un- 
profitable, 365. 

Virginia, Declaration of Rights, 138. 

Virtues of Christianity social, 416. 

Von Seybel, distrusts Rousseau's 
theory, 208. 

Vote-buying, a menace, 335. 

Waldo, Peter, translates Gospels, 
125. 

Ward, Lester F. : affirms essential 
equality of all, 168, 345; describes 
psychic factors in society, 314, 
442; expects freedom througli so- 
cial control, 245; on aggression by 
brain power, 71; on relation of 
service and reward, 356; on prices 
as fixed by monopoly, 228; on soul 
as great transforming agent, 316; 
on problem of fair distribution, 



458 



INDEX 



356; wants a real social govern- 
ment, 248; wants State to extend 
its functions, 114. 

Washington, President, warns against 
party spirit, 199. 

Waste, to be prevented, 347. 

Wealth, a means and not an end, 

394- 
Wedgewood, Julia, on ideal element 

in society, 304. 
Wernle, Paul, describes beginnings 

of the church, 262. 
Westcott, Brooke F. : defines the 

idea of democracy, 114; on social 

aspects of Christianity, 442. 
Westermarck, on family as nucleus 

of social group, 38. 
Whittier, pleads for freedom, 155. 
Williams, Roger: contended for soul 

liberty, 135; founder of democ- 



racy in Rhode Island colony, 136. 

Williams, W. R., on the Christian 
religion, 302. 

Willoughby, W, W. : describes feudal 
system, 43; explains and criticizes 
social contract, 45 f; on the con- 
ception of the State, 18; on re- 
ligion and political matters, 301 ; 
says anarchy has no logical basis, 
85; shows defects in Bluntschli's 
theory, 49. 

Wilson, Woodrow, on Patriarchal 
Theory of State, 38 f. 

Wordsworth, a poet of democracy, 
152. 

World, can be made better, 401. 

Wycliffe, translates Scriptures, 125. 

Zechariah the prophet, on the better 
city, 343. 



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